
Qass,, I- JBJ__ 
Book , ^69^ 



AMERICA AND 




HE AMER»rAN5> 



PRICE 
FIFTY 



Jimerica ana the Hmericans 

from a Frencb Point of Vieu) 



UMO, Cloth, $1.25 Paper, 50 Cents 



The critics have been having a field day over this enter- 
taining book, which was published by Charles Scribner's Sons 
late in February, and which went into a fourth edition before 
the end of April, a well-known English publisher having pur- 
chased a thousand copies in one order. A complete re'siuni 
of the "points of view" is impossible, but a few opinions 
culled at random, are very enlightening as to the charactei 
of the volume : 



"The book has been read in the 
French by numbers of Bostonians. It 
is now to be published in translation, 
and all the world may read, for example, 
what he says of the Hubside."— j5?i?.y/o« 
Transcript. 

"It is either a heavy attempt at a 
hoax, or the dullest and most superficial 
book any foreigner ever wrote about 
America."— 77^^ Churchman. 

•'The book is entertaining because of 
its ^aXV —Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. 

" It is hard to convince a writer bound 
by such iron<:lad insular prejudices; 
with him, evidently, the whole world is 
divided into Parisians and barbarians." 
—Chicago Evening Post. 

"The book is written with character- 
istic French vivacity, and does not con- 
tain a dull line."— 7>i^ Advance. 

"There are trenchant truisms in the 
anonymous Frenchman's book, and 
there is a great deal of rubbish. Far 
from understanding the real character 
of the American, our friend contents 
himself with fooling round the edges of 
our civilization, toying with the fringes 
and taking our unshed crudities for our 
deepest feelings."— CV;/cd:^c Times- 
Herald. 



"The book is rather tiresome, in spile 
of a certain vivacity, but it may not 
prove tiresome to people who are them- 
selves imperfectly familiar with Amer- 
ica and Axn.QT{ca.ns.^'—Congregationalist. 

" Of the book as a whole one may say 
without reservation that it is immensely 
entertaining, and that its unsparing 
criticisms, which are never malicious, 
may almost invariably be accepted as 
fully deserved.'"— Boston Beacon. 

" Whoever is the author of the present 
book, however, has done his work well, 
and on the whole with fairness. If he is 
a Frenchman, he has criticized us with 
good nature and intelligence ; if he is an 
American, he has written a clever 
satire."— TV^zt' Have?t News. 

"The author of 'America and the 
Americans,' this amusing book of the 
hour, has shown himself not only apt in 
comment, but shrewd, observant and 
sagacious, after the fashion of a sound 
thinker and finished man of the world." 
—iMihuaukee Sentinel. 

"One does not need to be told that 
this book is written by a Frenchman . . 
He is a French snob whose book, like 
other anonymous productions, is well 
fitted for the waste paper basket."— A^zf 
York Obserz'er. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, - - . . NEW YORK CITY 



AMERICA AND 
THE AMERICANS 



FROM A FRENCH 
POINT OF VIEW 



SIXTH EDITION 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK •.• ••• •.• •.• 1897 



.C^v-- 



Copyright, 1897, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



TROW DIRCOTORV 

PRINTINQ AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



TO 

It may seem strange to the readers of some of 
these pages that I dedicate this little book to you, 
an American — the loveliest, the truest, the most 
competent of women, worthy to wear a coronet in 
any country, needing none in your own. I lay 
my prejudices as a Frenchman at your feet. Were 
all your countrywomen like you, there could be no 
happier land than this. 



PRE FA CE 

At the suggestion of two of my American 
friends I have permitted these hasty notes 
to be translated for publication. In spite y 
however, of entreaty on their part, I have 
declined to make the author of them know?i. 
It is enough that a Frenchman, o?ie of 
whose ancestors was a close friend of 
Lafayette, and who has enjoyed on two 
occasions the hospitality and welcome of 
many America7is, writes thefn. There is no 
malice — there can be none — since when they 
were written there was no thought of their 
publication ; and there is naught but kind- 
ness intended, since there was naught but 
kindness received during my two visits to 
the great American republic. If anonymity 
vii 



Preface 

has its disadvantages, it has, too, its distifict 
advantages, for it ca?i make me no enemies 
and lose me no friends, and leaves me in 
that state of calm 7ieut7'ality which is with- 
out prejudice aud without partiality. If I 
ani discovered, it will be only by those 
who have admitted me, a st7'a?iger, to a?i 
inti^nacy which, as a friend, I should be 
the last to violate ; and of what touches 
them I could, ifi spite of fnyself, only write 
the 77iost agreeable things. 



Vila 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. Liverpool to New York .... 7 

//. First Impressions of New York . 12 

III. Social Side of New York . . . 2g 

IV, Public and Private Functions .- . 42 
V. Social Contrasts jj 

VI. Conflicting Evidence 68 

VIL On Being Busy 83 

VIII. American Politics gg 

IX. A Visit to Boston 112 

X. Class Distinctions ...... 126 

XL Concord, Plymouth , and Cambridge 14J 
ix 



Contents 



Page 

XII. American English 136 

XIII. Travel a V Amiricaine . . . idp 

XIV. The Black Belt iSj 

XV. Improvidence . .v. . . . 195 

XVI L Enfant Terrible 2og 

XV 11 ''Society'' 223 

XVIII. Su7nmer Resorts 2j8 

XIX. Impressions of Chicago . . . 2jj 

XX. American Newspapers . . . 267 

XXI. Conclusion 286 



/ write. 



I 

Liverpool to New York 

^^I^^^HEN I left Paris for a second 
V%Sh^-^~vt^ voyage to the United States, 
my sister made me promise to 
supplement my letters to her 
by keeping a diary that should be delivered 
to her for perusal on my return. Though why 
I may be permitted to call myself a much- 
travelled man for one of my years, having 
been to the university in Germany, and 
for a winter in Rome, for a year in Swit- 
zerland, and for several shorter journeys to 
Russia, Turkey, Holland, and England, I 
had never been requested before to give 
anything in the way of a detailed account 
of my journeys. 

But with the United States it was differ- 
ent. A charming American Secretary of 
Legation had told my no less charming 
sister that she much resembled the beauti- 
ful Madam R., of New York. Strange to 



America and the Americans 

say, a succeeding friendship with both the 
above-mentioned Secretary and his wife led 
us to the discovery that a certain distant 
American relative of Lafayette, who accompanied him 
on his second voyage to the New World, 
saw and was conquered by a beautiful Amer- 
ican whom he met at Newport, and after- 
ward married. Hence it turned out that 
the beautiful Madam R. is in sooth a rela- 
tive — very distant — of our family. 

This accounts for my sister's anxiety to 
hear more in detail of my impressions, first 
of Madam R. (alas ! for the vanity of 
women), and then of America and the 
Americans. 

As I had affairs of importance to attend 
to in England, I went first to England and 
sailed from Liverpool to New York on one 
of Her Majesty's White Star line of steam- 
ers. But one travels, I should think, under 
English auspices only when one cannot 
travel protected by a French chef, and 
made comfortable by French attendance. 
I am no Anglophobist, but the English 
cannot make coffee, so that a Frenchman 
has no breakfast ; they cannot dress salad, 



Liverpool to New York 



gastrofKS 
my. 



h^nce no luncheon; they cannot make 
soup, hence an ill-regulated dinner. As 
one lives but to eat at sea, this is a serious 
defect ; and though Crecy, Agincourt, and 
Waterloo are suggestive arguments in fa- 
vor of English meat and drink, even to a English 
Frenchman, still they have failed to con- 
vince me in favor of a breakfast for a glad- 
iator, a luncheon for a bull-dog, and dinner 
for a digestive apparatus run by electricity. 
It was a disappointment to me on look- 
ing over the passenger-list to find that 
most of my fellow-travellers were not Amer- 
icans, but Germans, or so, at least, such 
names as Arnheim, Bethel, Blumberger, 
Salzberg, and others led me to suppose. 
But I was soon to discover my mistake. In 
spite of the fact that even I spoke better 
English than most of the other frequenters 
of the smoking-room, I was told by a young 
gentleman from Boston that all these people 
with the strange German names were Amer- 
icans. He told me also to take a tram-car 
ride down Broadway, on my arrival in 
New York, to see for myself to what a dol- 
orous extent that great city had become 



America and the Americans 

Semiticized. These loud - talking, pool- 
selling, pool-buying, story-telling denizens 
of the smoking-room, who spoke broken 
English, were, as he had affirmed, Ameri- 
cans. 

One of the large retail shops in New York, 
the shop which, without equal courtesy and 
business-like methods, attempts to do for 
New York what the Bon Marchd does for 
Paris, and Whiteley's for London, is in the 
'*jerusa- hauds of the Jews. These people are, said 
Golden." my young friend, the banker, from Boston, 
the Chinese of our retail trade. And surely 
one has only to read the signs from one end 
of Broadway to the other to be made ac- 
quainted with the fact that the Mosaic de- 
spoiling of the Egyptians goes on with re- 
newed vigor in New York to-day. 

The famous New York cafe. The Del- 
monicos, is a veritable synagogue at the 
dinner-hour, for these mongrel Americans 
/ are not personce gratce at the clubs, and 
are driven to congregate in restaurants. 
One of the avenues running parallel to the 
Fifth Avenue is almost given over to them 
as a place of residence, and I was told that 



Liverpool to New York 



it is a favorite amusement of certain idle 
young gentlemen to ride in the horse -cars on 
this particular avenue, and to make bets as 
to the percentage of their fellow-passengers / 
who between any two given streets will have 
straight noses. One of the best-known 
monthly magazines is in their hands ; the 
minor and least attractive legal business of 
the city is theirs to such an extent that rep- 
utable practitioners have more than once 
threatened to take proceedings against their 
disreputable methods-, and the newspaper of 
the largest circulation, and of the most 
unsavory reputation, in New York, is also 
owned by a Jew. They are so numerous, 
and control so much money and so many 
votes, and fight for one another so unscru- Clannish- 
pulously, that no one criticises or attacks 
them openly, though on all hands one hears 
sneers, innuendoes, and dislike expressed. 
My only opportunity for judging of their 
good or bad qualities was what I saw and 
heard in the smoking-room during the voy- 
age. For one meets them socially nowhere 
—at the clubs, in society, or elsewhere. 
Of the score or more whom I could study 

5 



America and the Americans 



Cheap 
patriotism. 



*^ Ich iveiss 
nickt ivas 
soil es be- 
deuten I " 



at leisure on the steamer, whether they 
were typical or not, I do not know. They 
were theatrically American, however ; much 
given to a constant display of cheap pa- 
triotism, which led one to surmise that they 
were themselves a little self-conscious about 
it, and, like all pretence, theirs revealed 
itself in awkwardness and exaggeration. 
I was told later by an ex-politician that 
the cheap retail business, whether com- 
mercial, theatrical, legal, or journalistic, 
was largely in the hands of these people. 
On one occasion they attempted, in the 
name of the Germans of New York, to foist 
a statue — and it was said a poor one — of 
Heine upon their good-humored step- 
brothers, the native Americans, but this 
was too severe a test of their influence, and 
the statue was declined. As a foreigner it 
struck me as being supremely ridiculous 
that the statue of a foreigner, however 
eminent, which had been refused by three 
cities of his native land, should even be 
suggested as appropriate in America. But 
as we shall see — or, rather, as I shall say — 
all through these pages, the good -humor of 
6 



Liverpool to New York 



can girl. 



the Americans is their greatest virtue, and 
their most appalling vice. 

If these people were not fair types of the 
American, there was a young lady on board An Ameri'^ 
the steamer who was, I was informed, typi- 
cal of a large class of boarding-house, sum- 
mer-hptel Americans. She was of that 
wiry, thin, convex-back and concave-chest 
development that one sees frequently in 
the country towns of America. She had 
bright eyes, a tireless tongue, and a frank 
independence of manner, which would have 
been suspicious in a Frenchwoman, awk- 
ward in an Englishwoman, and impossible 
in a German Backfisch^ though in her own 
case it was apparently natural enough. In 
twenty-four hours she knew every unat- 
tached man on board the ship, and had 
walked and chatted with most of them, in- 
cluding myself. She was protected or 
abetted in her promiscuous independence 
by her father, who saw her only at meal- 
hours in calm weather, when he was able 
to be about. She lounged about in steamer- 
chairs with this one and that, and was often 
on deck alone with one man or another when 



America and the Americans 

all the other female passengers had retired. 
A morose She was Only about twenty years of age, 
vtewo/ker. ^^^ j^^^ innocencc, or her experience, or 
her temperament, seemed a sufficient safe- 
guard for her. To me she was merely a cu- 
riosity, but my friend from Boston sniffed 
at her from afar, remarking that she rep- 
resented one of the pests of American civ- 
ilization, one of those divorce-breeding, and 
divorce-excusing, women who are bad with- 
out vice, and good by the grace of God. 

Later, during a tour of the American 
summer-resorts with an American friend, 
the son of one of New York's ex-mayors, I 
saw numbers of this class of young women. 
Difficulty It is not surprising that neither Frenchmen 
o/ats rdie, ^^j. Englishmen understand them, for in 
France only a woman who is less innocent, 
and in England only a woman who is more 
innocent, could play this role. But here 
such an one is, strange to say, neither 
cocotte nor coquette. She aims neither at 
your pocket nor at your heart. She per- 
mits every liberty, but no license, and owes 
her existence to the reckless carelessness 
and good-humor of the American parent, 
8 



Liverpool to New York 



and to a certain climatic influence which 
makes for sexlessness. For it is, indeed, true Tempera- 
that, with the exception of the Southern Safeguard, 
States, there is a steady faUing off in the 
birth-rate among those who are of Ameri- 
can parentage on both sides, for two or 
more generations back; so I was told, at 
least, by the polite and intelligent gentle- 
man who is at the head of the Department 
of Statistics. 

This curious phase of the native Ameri- 
can's physical temperament, and, coupled 
with it, a certain strained religious senti- 
ment, make possible these promiscuous im- 
proprieties, which here result harmlessly, 
but which in any other country would cer- 
tainly entail social disasters. 

Nowhere have I seen or heard this point 
discussed — namely, the influence of the 
climate upon the procreative powers. It 
may well be that this terrible climate, with 
its ninety-eight, ninety-nine, and one hun- 
dred degrees in the shade in summer; 
and in some parts as much as forty, and 
even more, below the zero point in winter, 
may have an unlooked-for effect upon the 



America and the Americans 



Changes in 
national 
character- 
istics. 



increase of population. When the tremen- 
dous immigration of foreigners lessens, and 
the population, as a whole, has spent half a 
century in this nervous atmosphere, there 
may be, to the amazement of the statisti- 
cians, a sudden cessation of the present 
enormous yearly increase of population. 

In the South, where the factor of im- 
migration plays a less prominent part, al- 
ready the negroes are increasing at a ratio 
of more than two to one faster than the 
whites. New York is no longer Dutch, 
though only one hundred years ago half 
the signs in William Street were in Dutch, 
and up to 1764 no sermon in English had 
been preached in any of the three Dutch 
churches. 

Delaware is no longer Scandinavian and 
Norwegian ; New England is no longer 
Old England, or New England, but French- 
Canadian and Irish, and not long ago Bos- 
ton itself had an Irish Catholic as its 
mayor. Whether this is the result of the 
enormous immigration — the increase in 
population during the ten years, 1880-90, 
was 12,466,467 — or owing, in part at least, 



10 



Liverpool to New York 



to the growing sterility of the native-born 
Americans, is a matter that concerns ethni- 
cal students, and which gains nothing from 
its discussion by a mere curious traveller 
like me. 

Our scientific historian, Taine, would 
attribute the taciturnity and moodiness of 
the men also to the climate. In two cen- Effects of 
turies the Puritans, the Cavaliers, the Hu- 
guenots, and the Dutch, have grown quite 
away from the temperament of the parent 
stocks. The American is voluble enough, 
on occasion, as is the American Indian, 
but the salient traits of the Americans to- 
day are their changeful moods. All hope 
one day, all discouragement the next. Taci- 
turn and frowning, and then talkative and 
nervously jolly. Some of the men who 
have lived for a long time in the West are 
already very like the Indians in disposi- 
tion ; and even in the East a serene equa- 
bleness of disposition is far mora rare than 
among the men of Europe. Climate, en- 
vironment, call it what you will, I merely 
note the fact, leaving it to the more studi- 
ous to explain. 

II 




II 

First Impressions of New York 

IVERYTHING depends upon 

one's point of view. To judge 

New York — its politics, its 

r social life, the manners and 

cultivation of its people — from the level of 

The point Paris or London or Amsterdam or Rome, 

of view. .g ^^ come to one's task with the eyes out 

of focus. 

One hundred years ago the population 
of Philadelphia was 32,205, the population 
of Boston was 14,640, and New York was 
a small Dutch town at the mouth of the 
Hudson with a population of 24,500. 
Scarcely a street was paved ; street-lamps 
were sometimes lighted and sometimes not ; 
at the hour when fashionable dinners begin 
now, all festivities and gayeties were over 
then, and the cry of the watchman, '* Nine 
o'clock and all's well," was heard ; John 
Jacob Astor, whose descendants now give 



First Impressions of New York 

you dinners of the most luxurious descrip- 
tion, had just landed in New York with his 
stock of violins ; theatres were tabooed as 
immoral ; there was no national coinage, 
and even so late as fifty years ago the small 
money consisted mainly of foreign coins ; 
there were no pubHc hbrariesandno reading- 
rooms ; there was less mail-matter distrib- a century's 

progress^ 

uted then in a year by all the thirteen States 
than is now distributed in one day from the 
New York Post-office ; a man who had been 
to Europe was pointed out in the streets as 
a celebrity ; the total population of the na- 
tion then, it is estimated, was about two and 
a half millions, now it is seventy milHons ; 
the annual cost of carrying on the whole 
government was then 27,500,000 francs; 
in 1895 the disbursements for pensions 
alone were 704,796,805 francs, paid to 
almost a million different persons. 

These and many more facts of like im- 
port should be in possession of the traveller incomplete- 
when he begins his sight-seeing in New plained. 
York. Then the newness of it all ; the 
vulgarity of much that one sees ; the lack 
of repose ; the thousand and one details 

13 



America and the Americans 

left unattended to ; the sudden fluctuations 
in the social and financial world ; the lack 
of courtesy among all the servants, public 
and private, and the lack of good manners 
among many of the masters ; the entire 
disregard of personal liberty and of indi- 
vidual rights ; the strenuous efforts on all 
hands and by everybody de vouloir tout 
regler, excepte eux-memes, which may be 
said to be a national characteristic — these 
features of this civilization, and much else 
besides, are judged differently if you bear 
in mind their own past, and do not at- 
tempt to measure them by the thousand 
years of Paris or London, Venice or Rome. 
For the first glimpses of the city, as you 
New York Sail iuto its glorious harbor, no excuses 
are needed. Some of the buildings are so 
high that they look like attempts of Jack, 
of the bean-stalk fame, to build a step- 
ladder to Heaven. The hard glaring light 
of the sun brings out sharply the outlines 
of the hundreds of colossal buildings stand- 
ing where one hundred years ago the first 
Roosevelt had his tanneries, and the Lis- 
penard meadows were a favorite resort of 

14 



First Impressions of New York 

sportsmen, and land was sold by the acre 
which is now leased by the square foot. It 
affronts the imagination. Nowhere else in 
the world has the giant of material progress 
worn such huge seven-league boots. This 
is impossible in the life of little more than 
one generation of men, you say, as you 
stand on the deck of your steamer, but in 
another half hour you are disillusioned. 

You land on a rough wooden wharf; DisUiw 
you are tumbled about and tumbled over 
by men who speak in the brogue of Ireland 
and the guttural of the Vaterlaiid ; wagons 
and men and horses are tangled in an 
inextricable mass outside the rough shed ; 
you are bundled into an ill-smelling car- 
riage with torn upholstery, which creaks 
and groans as it is bumped along over the 
wretched pavements, drawn by two Rosi- 
nantes in a tattered harness, and driven by 
an Irishman who throws aside his cigar Hibemia 
only after he has driven a block or two, 
and whose costume is made up from the 
wreckage of a bankrupt livery-stable and a 
pawn-shop. You are charged fifteen francs 
for your drive of, perhaps, two miles, and 

15 



America and the Americans 

one franc extra for each piece of luggage, 
and though you pay peaceably through 
the nose, your coachman expectorates as 
he gets back on his carriage, with never a 
word of thanks, or a touch of the hat. 

Then it is that you say, '' Ah, no, this is 
not a miracle, this is still a frontier settle- 
ment I " 

But, alas ! for one*s impressions. You 
are ushered to the rooms engaged for you 
by your friend in Washington at a hotel 
in Fifth Avenue. It has been done by 
telegraph, but in a moment the wharf 
and the hurly-burly and the expectorat- 
ing Hibernian are forgotten. There are 
Compensa flowers on the table, there is a bath-room 
done in tiles, there are soft carpets, beauti- 
ful rugs, tasteful furniture, and the Figaro, 
Revue des deux Mondes, and Le Petit Jour- 
nal, cut and on your table. The hot 
water pours into the tub in a torrent, the 
soap and towels are of the best, and the 
breakfast, of fruit, fish, eggs, and coffee, 
which follows soon after the bath, is 
served in costly porcelain. I am the 
guest of my friend here until the day after 
i6 



tions. 



First Impressions of New York 

to-morrow, which is the earliest moment 
he can get away from Washington. 

I am a Frenchman, I am economical, I 
look no gift-horse in the mouth, but I 
cannot refrain from wondering what this 
all costs. We met this young man, my 
sister and I, in Paris, through the intro- 
duction of my friend the attache. His 
father, an ex -mayor of the city, is, they 
say, a very rich man — why or how I American 
know not, but lucri bonus est odor ex re 
qualibet — ^as only these American nabobs 
are rich in these days — rich in cash — not in 
low-rent paying lands, like the English, or 
in small-interest bearing rentes, like my 
poor compatriots. 

He stayed with us in the country, and was 
my guest at my poor apartment in Paris, 
but we gave him nothing like unto this. 

I begin to regret my anger at the wharf. Apologies 
my annoyance at the bumping-machine in imp-Vs- 
which I was conveyed thence, my annihi- 
lating astonishment at the coachman's fare. 
Surely, I say to myself, that momentary 
discomfort was not a feature, but an ac- 
cident, of this civilization. 

17 



sions. 



America and the Americans 

I begged to be let alone to-day and to- 
morrow, therefore I dine alone in the 
evening down-stairs, at a small table, in a 
large dining-room. There are many peo- 

Types. pie about in all sorts of costumes. At one 

table are two gentlemen ; one of them has 
a sandy chin-whisker which protrudes al- 
most at right angles from his chin ; he 
and his friend have beefsteak, ice-cream, 
and champagne for their dinner. Not a 
dozen yards away is a party of four, two 
gentlemen and two ladies, the ladies de- 
collete to the point of embarrassment, and 
with jewels on hands and neck, and in 
their hair. What exaggeration, I think to 

Extremes, myself. The gentleman of the aggressive 
chin- whisker only needs spurs and a som- 
brero to be of the prairies ; while the la- 
dies only need a little rouge, and as much 
off the length of their skirts as they have 
taken off their shoulders, to be of the erst- 
while Mabille. 

But I doubt my own impressions now, 
and therefore I make no generalizations of 
New York's manners, customs, and cos- 
tumes, from these people, who may not be 
i8 



cal broncho. 



First Impressions of New York 

Americans at all. As for me, my own 
dinner is of the most excellent, et rien Jie 
doit deranger V hojtnete homme qui dine. 

The next morning, having the day to 
myself, I remember me of the advice of 
the young banker from Boston. From my 
hotel to Broadway is not far. At the 
corner of the street I determine to mount 
one of the swift-passing tram-cars. They Andeciri- 
rush by me, one after the other, bells clang- 
ing, and silhouette figures swaying about 
inside. I hold up my hand in vain. As 
I am beginning to wonder whether they 
are all express-trains, a kindly stranger 
touches my arm and says : ** You're on the 
wrong corner, my friend. They only stop 
on the farther corner, and if you don't 
want your arms jerked out, you'd better 
mount the animal where he proposes to 
stop ! " I turn to bow my thanks, but my 
stranger takes two or three steps and a 
jump away from me, grasps the platform 
of a passing car, and as he fades away in 
the distance, I see him gesticulating to me 
to move down to the lower corner. 

He was right. I move down a few steps, 

19 



America and the Americans 

and the next car stops in front of me with 
a rumble and a grating noise, which I af- 
terward learn is made by an endless cable 
under the street, which is the motive power 
of all these rushing, clanging caravans. My 
particular car is crowded inside and out- 
side. Each time it stops, you are hurled 
Eccentrici- forward and then back. People bending 
*beast. ^ to sit down as the car starts, place their 
posteriors anywhere but where they in- 
tended, and not infrequently in a space 
already occupied by another. The con- 
ductor and the passengers come and go, 
over your feet, jamming your legs mean- 
while; women at the far end of the car 
make signs at the conductor to stop, in 
vain, and finally elbow and shove them- 
selves to the door, hurtling against other 
passengers, and flung now and then into the 
arms of those sitting down, as the car 
stops, or starts, suddenly. 

Not far from where I got on, the con- 
ductor shouts something into the car, and 
What New- of a sudden we veer around a curve at a 
call a prodigious rate of speed, and one lady who 

cuyrve. j^^^ \iQQ,vi clinging to a strap in front of me 

20 



First Impressions of New York 

is whirled round, still holding to the strap, 

and knocks her neighbor's newspaper into 

his face, and dislocates his hat with the 

same movement ; while two men who had 

been standing in the door-way are shot 

into the car as from a catapult, where they a study in 

are stopped short by those clinging to "'^^^ ^^^"' 

straps in the passage-way. 

At last I get a seat, and the drama that 
goes on about me interests me so much 
that I continue my ride as far as Wall 
Stree't, forgetting all about my intention to 
read the signs along the route. 

These tram-cars seem to be gymnasiums 
on wheels. The alertness of eye, and ner- 
vous, strained look of the thin faces and 
wiry frames about me, are in some sort ex- 
plained. Both men and women must be 
sharply and constantly watchful if they 
are to survive a daily pilgrimage, or, bet- 
ter, a daily crusade in these vehicles. A 
second's inattention, a moment's respite 
from the dangling leather, which hangs 
from the roof, and you are shot into some- 
body's back, bosom, or belly, or sent 
sprawling your length over the knees of 

21 



America and the Americans 



A merican 
impertur- 
bability. 



What we 
should 
think of it 
in Europe. 



two or three of the seated passengers. 
There is little bodily harm done, but there 
is an ever-recurring succession of shocks to 
the dignity and to the nerves. 

The most remarkable thing about it all 
is, that no one seems disturbed or greatly 
put out by this involuntary riot which 
takes place every few seconds. 

These cars are owned by companies 
which in return for the valuable franchise 
of the use of the principal streets in the 
city, promise good transportation facilities 
at a cheap rate. They do it in the hig- 
gledy-piggledy fashion above described. 

In France such infringement of the rights 
of the people to personal comfort and per- 
sonal dignity, if persisted in, would result 
in revolution ; and in London one day of 
it would fill the next day's newspapers with 
indignant protests, and in a week's time 
the matter would be under the control of 
the police. 

But in this strange republic these good- 
natured people are slaves to every conceiv- 
able form of political and financial job- 
bery, and no one protests. It may be the 



22 



First Impressions of New York 

land of freedom, but it certainly is not the 
land of freemen. Personal comfort, per- 
sonal privacy, the right to go and come, 
and to live as one prefers, without com- 
ment, and even without newspaper noto- 
riety, are as impossible as in Russia, or in 
Armenia. Each one is so taken up with 
his own and somebody's business other 
than his own, that he has no time, and no 
vigor, left to defend what in every other 
civilized country are deemed to be the most 
precious personal prerogatives. 

<^ Why does no one protest?" I say to Protests un 
one American after another. It is useless, 
they tell me. The protestor is unpopular 
here. There are too many people inter- 
ested to keep the people slaves, to permit 
anyone to express dissent. The news- 
papers tar and featlier such a one with 
abusive and vituperative rhetoric, his 
friends laugh at him, and all those who are 
acquainted with him hint broadly that he 
is of an irritable, testy disposition. He is 
told that he had better take up his resi- 
dence in one of the ''effete monarchies of 
Europe, ' ' where such things are better reg- 

23 



America and the Americans 

ulated. The result is, that while Europe 
ships her gallows birds, paupers, and in- 
competents here, and the commercial coy- 
otes of all nations swarm in, to oust the 
natives from their rightful gains, represen- 
tatives of three or four of the wealthiest 
families and many others of minor social 
and financial repute, are living more and 
more months of each year in Europe, and 
some of them live there altogether. It is 
said that a hundred million dollars, and 
Why so more, are spent in Europe every year by 
American Americans, who, as the years go by, go 
TpenUn more often, stay longer, and spend more. 
urope. j^ wealth, privacy, personal comfort, and 
personal liberty are not protected here, 
those who wish to possess them in security 
will infallibly go elsewhere. Sharp and 
quick-witted as the Yankee is reputed to 
be, he has not seen yet even the mere 
commercial disadvantages of permitting 
his native land to be ruled by the rough, 
to the extinction and the ultimate exclu- 
sion of the gentle. 

Thus are my impressions first gained, 
and then rudely contradicted. It seems 
24 



First Impressions of New York 



impossible to reconcile such experiences as 
those of the landing in New York and the 
journey in the tram-car with the elegant 
comfort and convenience of the hotel. 
The one set of experiences, all rough, raw, 
and lawless ; the others dominated by effi- 
ciency and method. 

But one sees at last the solution of this 
problem of contradictions. And the solu- 
tion is, namely, that everything requiring 
nicety of mechanical means, everything Machinery 
that can be done by steam or electricity, TitttZT 
or gas, or by harnessing the powers of nat- 
ure, is done well, sometimes superlatively 
well ; while anything demanding person- 
al service, or the training, discipline, and 
courtesy of men and women acting as ser- 
vants, in either a high or low capacity, is 
done meanly, carelessly, irresponsibly, and 
without any sense of honorable allegiance 
to a master. 

Here again it is forgotten, not only by The^oint 
the foreigner, but by the native American ^-Jj;^^ 
as well, that it is only just a hundred 
years ago that it was with the utmost diffi- 
culty that New York State was persuaded 

25 



America and the Americans 



to join in the ratification and acceptance 
of the Constitution. The people feared 
that by so doing they would lose something 
of their independence. This spirit is still 
rampant to-day, and nowhere more notice- 
ably so than among the ignorant foreign 
element, who, escaping from the tyranny 
of their own incompetency at home, make 
pretence of demanding a personal liberty 
here, which results only in lawlessness and 
license. 

This is a new country. Land is plenty 
and cheap. I am assured that no industri- 
ous, sober, and honest man need lack the 
necessaries and evv ^ some of the luxuries of 
life. But, in spite of this, it is estimated 
strange that 3,000,000 persons are supported in 
oYpoverty. wholc or in part each year, and at a cost to 
somebody of 250,000,000 francs for main- 
tenance, and 250,000,000 francs in loss of 
productive power. In this great State of 
New York alone, the cost of dependent, 
defective, and delinquent persons is over 
60,000,000 francs per annum. 

I go to bed thinking that civihzation by 
machinery is not an assured success. But 
26 



First Impressions of New York 

who knows ! In this country of anoma- 
hes and contradictions, I may go to bed a 
week hence convinced that I am wrong. 

At any rate, here is an interesting ex- 
periment in government and in social life. 
There are no slaves, and in the European 
sense — except in half a dozen of the larger 
seaboard cities — no servants. Every man 
here is striving to be his own master, and 
consequently most of them must be their 
own servants. 

In the Eastern part of the country they 
are already struggling with the illogical 
problem : How can your political equal be incipient 
your social or domestic- inferior? If all de- ^^""^ ""^' 
serve the same comforts and the same re- 
spect, who is to black the boots and wash 
the dishes? Discontent ripens fast in this 
atmosphere, and no wonder ! During every 
succeeding political contest each man is The hood- 
crowned. Between the political contests Voters. 
the crowns are hung up behind the door, 
but the sight of them makes men wish to 
wear them all the time. An effusive re- 
ception awaits the political prestidigitator 
who promises to juggle all the hewers of 
27 



America and the Americans 

wood and carriers of water into perpetual 
crown-wearers ! Alas for the republic when 
such a trickster appears ! He will probably 
be voted down the first time, but he will 
inevitably reappear. 



38 




Ill 

Social Side of New York 

jO-DAY my New York friend ar- 
rives from Washington. He 
has written of his plans for 
me for the next few days. They 
include luncheons, dinners, the opera, and 
three dances. Verily, they entertain au 
galop, these good Americans. 

First I lunch with him at a club on 
Fifth Avenue. He tells me it is mostly 
frequented by the younger set of men, and Some young 
I meet half a dozen of them. It is the Yorkers 
fashion now, he tells me, to be rather ag- 
gressively American here. I am not made 
aware of this, however, by their conversa- 
tion. Perhaps they suit their after-lunch- 
eon-cigarette chat to what they deem to 
be my taste rather than theirs. Certainly 
they are profusely hospitable, and alto- 
gether at my service, and among the most 
agreeable is a brother-in-law of Madam 
29 



America and the Americans 

R., whom, he tells me, I shall meet to- 
night at the opera. 

The conversation is much that of idle 
men all over the world. I remark upon 
this cosmopolitanism to my friend, who 
hints rather broadly that this apparent de- 
tachment of mind is assumed for my ben- 
efit, and thereupon describes some of the 
men more in detail. One is the editor of 
a magazine which is much given to articles 
by English noblemen, but a very good 
magazine withal, two or three numbers of 
which I have since read. Another is in a 
large banking-house downtown, and comes 
up to luncheon at the request of my friend. 
and their Still another is the son of a man who 

ancestors. _ 

twenty-nve years ago was an unknown law- 
yer in a Western country town ; to-day he 
is the confidential attorney of several great 
financiers, and his son is an amiable idler. 
Another married a daughter of one of the 
two great millionnaire households here, and 
spends her money with eccentric lavish- 
ness. Another is the grandson of a Scotch 
weaver who introduced a process of carpet- 
making that has built up one of the great- 

30 



Social Side of New York 



est businesses in New York. Another is 
the son of a Western man who made mill- 
ions by the invention and exploitation of 
a machine for cutting wheat. The father 
of another discovered a process for coating 
pills, and his family mounts the golden 
stair of social prominence pellet by pellet. 

I cannot understand how it is that cer- 
tain American critics sneer at this, and 
love to point out the grandfatherlessness of The charm 
New York's social life. To me it is as a "one" own 
dream, as an incitement to ambition, as a '^""^ "''' 
magnificent social panorama gilded by the 
commercial prowess of vigorous men. 

As we leave the club one of these young 
men points across the way, and, as he says 
*<good-by," tells us he is going for a 
shave. The phrase, " going for a shave," ''Going /or 
catches my ear ; I am soon enlightened. 
These correct and well-dressed young men, 
many of them, are shaved each day by a 
public barber. Some days later I go to 
the same shop to have my hair cut, and 
there I see rows of small porcelain cups 
with the names of their owners in gilt let- 
ters upon them. Some of the names are 

31 



a shaved 



America and the Americans 

those of men whom I have already met. 
Young gentlemen come in, take off their 
collars and neck-cloths, and their faces are 
daubed with soap and rubbed by the hands 
of the barber and shaved. They are then 
wiped off with a towel, powdered, and, 
without any further ablutions on their part, 
they go thence to make love, or to kiss 
their wives or their children, for all I 
know. This seems to me horribly dirty, 
and painfully disagreeable. Many men, I 
am told, never complete their toilet at 
home in the morning, but are shaved down- 
town each morning. Their faces are pawed 
and patted and powdered by a negro, a 
German, or an Italian, and so left for the 
day. 
Mypreoc' As I sit at dinner in the evening at the 
%nner\ '^ table of the weaver's son, I cannot forbear 
wondering how many of the gentlemen 
present were shaved by Germans, how 
many by Irishmen, how many by Italians, 
and so on. 

The dinner is a very sumptuous affair, 
with flowers in profusion — indeed flowers 
are bought and sold and seen here as in 

32 



Social Side of New York 



no other city in the world, the roses are 
more beautiful than any I have ever seen 
elsewhere, and cost, I am told, at certain 
seasons of the year, fabulous prices. 

We are to go from dinner to the opera, 
hence the ladies are in gala costumes. The 
hostess actually wears a crown of diamonds AnAmeri- 

, , , - , , can coronet, 

on her head, and though none of the others 
wears so conspicuous an ornament, still 
the display of jewels is imposing. But the 
crown keeps catching my eyes, dazzling 
them and my understanding at the same 
time. *'Whois this lady? Is she a for- 
eigner ? " I ask of my friend as soon as we 
are alone. No, I learn that she is far from 
being a foreign aristocrat. Indeed it is 
only within the last ten years that she has 
been known, even in New York's more ex- 
clusive circle. She married a rich man, 
who has grown richer in trade, and she 
has, by natural diplomacy and by not 
stickling at the quality of some of the at- 
tention shown her, risen to her present 
position. She is certainly very charming, 
and her affairs are not my business, though 
from the stories that are offered me about 

33 



America and the Americans 



Leanings 
towards 
aristocra- 
cy. 



Thefts 
/roni the 
Herald'' s 
ojffice. 



her at intervals during my stay, her affairs 
seem to have been the business of a good 
many. 

Though this is a repubhc, though I read 
in the papers each morning abusive tirades 
on Enghsh ways and EngHsh customs 
and Enghsh noblemen, I recall that after 
Washington was made President, there was 
immediately a long and wordy wrangle in 
the new congress in regard to the title he 
was to bear. 

Evidently some of these rather boastful 
republicans still hunger for the flesh-pots 
of the titled Egyptians. In one of the 
large jeweller's shops there is a special de- 
partment of Heraldry, if you please, where 
these republicans have coats-of-arms put 
together for them. 

At the door of the opera-house, on coming 
out, I see scores of liveried men-servants, 
some of them with cockades in their hats, 
and on harnesses and carriage-doors, verily, 
I see crests and coats-of-arms, some of 
them too big even for real noblemen. 
Pray, Mrs. Sharp, Mrs. Green, Mrs. White, 
Mrs. Black, Mrs. Jones, — pray, where did 



34 



Social Side of New York 



your right to the coronet, the crest, and 
the coat-of-arms come in ? Do you even 
know what the various symbols, signs, and 
figures mean ? I have my doubts, truly ! 

It is surely an American idea that pellets, Manuf act- 
ox carpets, or furs, or ready-made clothing, ^Zidgar-^^ 
or reaping-machines, or dry-goods, or pat- 
ent medicines, or tea, or sugar, or hides, 
or railroad bonds, carried to the ii\\\ power, 
confer patents of nobility on their posses- 
sors or their legatees. But how else can 
these people have any right to them? And 
why, oh, why, do they want them at all ? 

And there are titles, too, yes, titles galore, 
among these boastful republicans. At the 
little luncheon-party one young man was 
invariably addressed as ''General," and 
another, who lives on his wife's money and 
other people's ideas, was called ''Colonel. ' ' 
They had been on somebody's staff, I was 
told in explanation. 

Even the newspapers are punctilious in Punctn- 
their bestowal of titles. "The Hon. ]Tt7iies.^ 
Patrick Divver " did this, "ex-Attorney- 
General So-and-so " did that ; " President 
Jones " said this, " ex-Secretary of the In- 

35 



America and the Americans 



Highfalu' 
tin nometi' 
clature. 



Secret love 
q/ titles. 



terior" said that; 
"General H." and 
<<His Excellency the 
and '^ ex-Boss C." and 



>» 



*' Colonel J. 
*' Governor X.' 



and 
and 

Governor of M." 
''Doctor Y." — all 



clergymen are given the degree of Doctor 
of Divinity, I notice — and '* Professor N." 
have arrived at such and such an hotel. 

Then these good plain people have so- 
cieties without number. There are Officers 
of the Legion of Honor, Comrades of the 
Grand Army, Sons of the Revolution, 
Knights of Pythias, Daughters of the Revo- 
lution, Colonial Dames, Societies of the 
Dutch, Societies of New England, the South- 
ern Society, and how many more I know 
not. Then each of these has its ribbon or 
its button or its badge, and in no country 
in Europe do you hear so many titles, or 
see so many insignia worn. 

This is all very pretty fooling, and harm- 
less enough were it frank and outspoken. 
But it is not. These same people toady to 
foreign noblemen as do no other people in 
the world. Politically they are loud, blat- 
ant even, in the reiteration of their repub- 
licanism j but socially they are tuft-hunters, 

36 



Social Side of New York 



not to say flunkeys of the most pronounced 
type. I am a Frenchman, one of my an- 
cestors was beheaded in the revolution, but 
I am a repubhcan. Locked away in our 
poor, tumbled-down chateau are ribbons, Faded 
crosses, buttons, and swords won and worn ^'^^' 
by men who bore my name when the great 
Louis, who could not write his own name, 
was putting the first wedge in, that was at 
last to tumble the monarchy to the ground. 
The young friend with whom I have just 
been lunching will tell you as much. But 
Dieu nC en garde from all this sham aristo- 
cracy, from all this frippery and foppery of 
nobility in a republic. 

Some of the titles bestowed upon differ- 
ent officers of these organizations I have 
mentioned, out-do even the ascriptions to 
the Almighty by a negro preacher at a camp- 
meeting. And worse yet. Do we, some 
of us, of older nations laugh at the rudeness 
and awkwardness of democratic manners ? Ungenerous 
What then is to be said of these people in '^^^ ^"^^' 
the East who laugh and sneer at the un- 
sophisticated manners of their own brethren 
who dwell west of the Mississippi and the 

37 



America and the Americans 



French po- 
liteness. 



A merican 
chivalry to 
women. 



Rocky Mountains ? Certain Western men 
came on to New York, while I was there, 
to start a Western Mining Exchange. The 
local newspapers made fun of the costumes 
of their wives and sisters, gave exaggerated 
illustrations of the costumes of the men, 
and were positively hilarious over their 
simple luncheon, their awkward manners, 
and their inelegant diction. 

If the Paris press treated a party of tour- 
ists from Lyons or Marseilles in this fash- 
ion, well-bred Frenchmen would stare and 
stammer, in amazement and disgust, when 
they opened their newspapers. Fancy put- 
ting the wives and sisters of your own 
countrymen, from another part of the coun- 
try, into the pillory of newspaper carica- 
ture ! These same editors, too, offer their 
columns as rewards to those who can lift 
them and their wives into the social swim. 
They pay this one, and that, for articles, 
and in return expect to be invited to din- 
ners and drawing-rooms ! 

I had heard much of the American chival- 
ry to women — of how they could walk the 
streets and travel alone. Let us be frank 

38 



Social Side of New York 



and say that it is all nonsense ! The 
newspapers make free with the names of 
ladies, and drag wives and mothers and 
sisters into the shambles of every politi- 
cal controversy, every social coJitretonps. 
While among the better classes, in their 
clubs and drawing-rooms, one hears hints, 
scandals, innuendoes, and stories — and 
most of them about the ladies in their 
own circle — such as would prepare the 
way for a dozen duels a week in my own 
country. 

The most shamelessly shocking periodi- 
cal that it has ever been my misfortune to 
read, is published in New York each week. 
It devotes itself openly to the libellous and 
the hcentious. The names of '^ society" 
people are to be found in almost every 
paragraph, and the most prurient details 
of every known, or suspected, scandal are 
blazed forth to the world in its pages. 
Our most suggestive pictorial French 
papers, highly seasoned and colored though 
they be, are as the Gospels to Rabelais, when Ribald 
compared with this sheet — wherein jokes ^""^ ' 
about ladies' underclothing, with the ladies* 

39 



America and the Americans 

names printed in full, are sometimes a feat- 
ure of its lascivious ribaldry — and yet 
One society nobody is shot ! There are societies for 
the prevention of cruelty to children, for 
the prevention of cruelty to animals, for 
the prohibition of intemperance, for the 
relief of the poor, for the prevention of 
the sale of obscene literature — societies, in- 
deed, without number, for the amusement 
of the rich at the expense of the poor, but 
no men and women strong enough to 
prevent this hebdomadal debauch of every 
body's morals who has ten cents to spend. 
All these political and social and moral 
contradictions and anomalies are amus- 
ing to me, but if I be not mistaken they 
portend dire results in the near future to 
this confident, and not infrequently arro- 
gant, republic. I could wish it were other- 
wise. Every Frenchman wishes it were 
A French' Otherwise. For ' ^07i aime quelquhin toujours 
9/ it. confrequelqu'tin, ' ' and no country in Europe 

would be so directly affected by the failure 
of republican manners and institutions here 
as we should be. For the anti-republican 
countries all about us, Germany, England, 

40 



Social Side of New York 



Austria, and Italy, would point a moral 
and adorn a tale, for the benefit of republi- 
can France, should republican institutions 
founder and fail in America. 



41 



IV 

Public and Private Functions 

^^g^E were going to the opera, when 
I forgot the opera in remember- 

Jing other things. Once there, 
it is a brilhant scene. In these 
The opera, matters, as in their fine buildings and their 
sumptuous hotels, this nation has caught 
up in the race with Europe. Music, scen- 
ery, and singing are of the best, and the 
audience, if anything, is even more gor- 
geously gowned and bejewelled than in 
Paris or London, and far more so than at 
a similar affair in poor bankrupt Rome, or 
even in St. Petersburg. If the precious 
stones and laces are what they look to be, 
these Americans must spend fortunes upon 
their women. 

Madam R. is not in her box until late, 
but at last I am presented to her. She 
laughs good-naturedly at dear Fifine's anx- 
iety to have a description of her, and bids 

42 



Public and Private Functions 

me come to see her out of town, some- 
where on the Hudson River, where she 
has her home. She hopes that if I am to 
describe her, I am not intending to pubHsh 
my diary-notes. I reply that I am incapa- 
ble of writing a book, even though I wished 
to do so. She tells me that Bourget's l^ourget. 
book was of small value, because most of 
his impressions seem to have been filtered 
through a Boston and Newport filter before 
they were printed. ''And, you know," 
she adds, '' Boston is no longer America ! " 

I stroll about downstairs, and, among 
other things, I notice that each programme 
has on it a numbered list of private boxes, 
and opposite the numbers the names of 
the occupants. As each box in the house 
is plainly numbered on the printed plan, 
this makes it possible for everyone with a 
programme to identify the people in the 
boxes. 

I understand less and less this practi- 
cally universal desire to exploit one's self, to Sei/adver- 
reveal one's identity even at the opera, to "^"^* 
have one's name in the papers, to have one's 
likeness published. Whether it be the 

43 



America and the Americans 

levelling-down process in a democracy 
which makes everyone eager in conse- 
quence to boost his head and shoulders 
up over the average Hne, or the lack of 
social confidence and security in people 
who have no well-defined classes, so that 
each one feels it incumbent upon him to 
assert himself always, and everywhere, I 
am not sure ; but whatever be the cause of 
this evident love of publicity, the result is 
very bourgeois indeed. 

In every civilization of any age, it is the 
desire of pretty much everybody to shield 
Privacy his life and that of his family, and to live 
S(y. " "^ part of the time, at least, quite on one side 
of the roar of the business, social, and politi- 
cal torrent. A small house away from the 
crowd is more highly esteemed than a 
large house in the crowd. In short, only 
those who cannot avoid it live all the time 
in the ruck of people. 

But it is quite different here. The popu- 
lation of the great cities increases enor- 
mously every year. I was told by a well- 
known worker at the social problems of 
New York the figures which give the pro- 

44 



Public and Private Functions 

portion of the people of New York City 

who Hve in hotels, boarding-houses, and Boarding- 

, . , , houses and 

tenements, and one is amazed at the num- hotels. 
ber. From these figures — I regret not 
having them here in Paris, but as I jotted 
down notes from day to day in America, I 
had not the smallest intention of using 
them in this way — I remember that it ap- 
peared that only a very small percentage of 
the people live in separate dwelling-houses. 
Even people whose incomes permit it, pre- 
fer to live in hotels rather than in small 
houses of their own in the suburbs. 

This is a sure sign of a superficial people, 
and of a thin culture, for it is the mark of 
the uncultivated to be uneasy and discon- 
tented away from the crowd, just as it is 
the mark of a more happy breeding to be 
discontented, if one is forced by circum- 
stances to be forever in it. 

This straining to make one's self conspic- 
uous is apparent not only in the numer 
ous likenesses and the columns of person- 
al paragraphs in the newspapers, but it is Newspaper 
evinced by the startling extravagance of ^°^°^"^^' 
dress not only in public places, but in the 

45 



America and the Americans 

shops and on the streets. Velvets, furs, 
laces, jewels, may be seen on the streets 
and in the tram-cars, morning, noon, and 
night of every day. The ladies whom I 
saw at the opera in all the brilliancy of 
court costumes are to be met with — they 
or their sisters of less social distinction — 
on the streets in costumes which, if less 
brilliant as to color, are no less costly as to 
texture and variety of fabric. 

It has been my good fortune to know the 
streets of Rome, Paris, London, St. Peters- 
burg, Amsterdam, and Vienna, but there is 
nothing approaching to the display of fine 

Extrava- raiment there that one sees in New York. 

dress. What would my French friends think of a 

lady walking to and from church in a cos- 
tume composed entirely of fur — ^jacket and 
skirt as well ; of another in velvet, draped 
profusely with lace, and a bonnet of jet with 
pink and white plumes, and, were I a mo- 
diste, I could enumerate many more which 
struck my unaccustomed eye as being equal- 
ly extravagant and in equally bad taste. 

When I pointed out to two Americans, 
with whom I was walking, this ostentatious 

46 



comfort at 
home. 



abroad. 



Public and Private Functions 

finery worn by so many women on the 
streets, I asked to what class they belonged, 
and how they lived at home. They told Lack of 
me that a fair proportion of them were Jew- 
esses, and that many more of them were 
people who lived in boarding-houses and 
hotels, and others, people who lived on a 
very small scale at home, with one, two, 
or three servants in their households. The 
sole social recreation of many of them is 
this parading of the streets, visiting the Display 
theatres, and invading the shops. 

There is a large middle class here, the men 
of which are busy from morning till night, 
and weary when they reach home. They 
have little social experience, and hence 
they find even the most elementary social 
duties irksome ; the consequence is that 
most of their women-folk are left to them- 
selves for social diversion, and they take it in 
its more barbaric forms only. The dinner- 
giving and dinner-going, which is so prev- 
alent here among a certain class, is largely 
confined to that class. This very common 
fonn of hospitality, even in the country 
towns of England, and among our large 

47 



America ami the Americans 

middle class in France, is narrowed down 
to a few, comparatively speaking, here. 
This is owing to the lack of knowledge in 
such matters of the great majority, and to 
the scarcity, and abnormally high wages, 
of trained, or even untrained, servants. 
'ociaiin- One might live a long time in London, 

xperience. ^^ -^ Paris, before seeing a guest at a twelve- 
o'clock wedding in his evening clothes — 
unless he were a French official appearing 
in his official capacity, as the President of 
the Republic at the races for example — but 
I saw this social gaucherie at a wedding 
here. There is much latent ignorance of 
this kind, which seldom reveals itself, be- 
cause its victims take pains to avoid appear- 
ing where they know they are on unsafe 
ground. 

This lack of social training and social 
experience — though there is no lack of so- 
rreat social cial aptitudc, for I defy Europe to produce 
more charming hostesses than half a dozen 
women I could name here, who I am told 
had been nowhere, seen nobody, and had 
nothing, until of a sudden, marriage, or the 
** ticker " in Wall Street, or an oil-well, or 
48 



Public and Private Functions 



a mine, landed them at their opportunity 
with overflowing purses — make even the 
more common forms of social intercourse 
comparatively rare, rare indeed to an ex- 
tent I was unprepared for. 

Thousands and thousands of families in 
even the larger cities of America, having 
an income amply sufficient, never dress in Artificial 
the evening, never serve wine on their "'"''^^'^^• 
tables, never have a dinner served in courses, 
a la Russe, when by themselves, and never 
attempt to have their friends to dinner 
without caUing in the men, the means, and 
the 7nenu from a restaurant. This makes 
life rather arid for the women. 

But to me the sadder side of it is, what 
I have noted in other departments of 
American life, the undemocratic phase of 
it. These people are not willing to be 
themselves, to dine out, and to have others Lack of so. 
to dine, to entertain, and to be entertained, 'JenJ^nfJ. 
in a manner suitable to their modest means. 
They live meanly, that they may dress ex- 
travagantly on the street, and from time to 
time entertain on a scale that is utterly un- 
related to their everyday Hfe. I know hun- 

49 



America and the Americans 



dreds of menages in France, and some score 
or more in England and Italy — ah, how 
often I have been told, sometimes twitted 
with the remark, that we have no word for 
*'home" in French, until I have been 
tempted to reply : *' Thank Heaven, no 
such word, and no such place, as is repre- 
sented by that word here, in many cases ' ' 
— where one goes home every night to a 
pleasant little dinner, quite suitable to be 
served to one or two friends, should they 
appear, and where the proprietors have less 
than 30,000 francs a year. I dare affirm 
that it would be impossible to find a pro- 
protionate number here among people of 
the same income. 

On the other hand, the number of so- 
Pubiic din- called pubUc dinners, where men, in num- 
ber from twenty-five to five hundred, meet 
to dine together, and to hear speeches as 
they smoke and drink afterward, is greater, 
far greater than anywhere else in the world. 
The Irish dine; the Germans dine; the 
Enghsh dine ; the Scandinavians dine ; 
men from all the States and territories of 
the Union resident in New York, dine to- 

50 



Iters. 



Public and Private Functions 

gether; the graduates of all the different 
colleges dine ; the bankers, the brokers, 
the jewellers, the travelling salesmen, the 
journalists, the athletic clubs, the Sons of 
the Revolution and the Fathers of the Re- 
bellion, and even the clergymen, dine in 
this pubhc fashion. 

This style of entertainment is an Ameri- 
can institution. It grows out of two con- 
ditions. First, the barrenness of much the 
greater part of the domestic social life ; and 
second, the astonishing and admirable glib- 
ness of speech of the Americans as a people. 

Some of this speaking I heard through Public 
the courtesy of my friend the editor, and 
I read a great deal of it, for I devoured 
American newspapers and periodicals dur- 
ing my stay there. When one hears these 
speeches — it matters little by whom, for 
they pretty much all speak well — one is a 
little jealous of a race which seems to be en- 
dowed by the gods with a gift so rare ; but 
when one reads them, one is rather sad 
than jealous. Nine -tenths of them are 
as sounding brass. They are for the ears 
— for long ears — not for the mind. A 

51 



speech. 



verbosity. 



America and the Americans 

French politician who should treat his con- 
stituents to the quality of oratory that evi- 
dently suffices here, would be ridiculed by 
every journal in France ; and in England 
such an one would be quietly shelved at 
the instance of his own party leaders. 

One understands at last how there can 
be so much speaking here, when the 
speeches are analyzed, for most of them are 
Gusts of mere verbal exercises — mere gusts of ver- 
bosity. Not that one wishes to give, or to 
leave, the impression that there are no good 
speakers, and no good speaking, among the 
Americans. That would be altogether 
false. 

When one has enjoyed the friendship, 
and heard the speech, both private and 
public, of Mr. James Russell Lowell, one 
may not say that. Mr. Evarts, too, I heard 
in Paris on one occasion, and Mr. Joseph 
Choate and the President of the Harvard 
University I heard speak in New York, and 
these men all rank with the very best men 
of any nation, one might almost say, indeed, 
of any time. But much of this speaking 
falls under one and the same head. Like 

52 



Public and Private Functions 



the paltry social life at home, and the occa- 
sional inappropriate display outside; like 
the meanness of one's personal surround- 
ings, and the exaggerated extravagance of 
dress in public ; so this speaking, much of The phUos- 
it, is but an insincere laying claim to what ^^'^y"-^^^- 
one wishes to appear rather than a mod- 
est exhibition of what one is or knows. 
There is a demagoguery of dress and man- 
ners and speech, as well as of political ac- 
tion, and it is here, alas ! in this republic, 
that one finds it in its most disagreeable 
forms. 

No one would belittle the high claims to 
sustained and brilliant speech of Webster, 
Clay, Calhoun, of Rufus Choate, Edward 
Everett, Wendell Phillips, of Beecher, 
Storrs, Phillips Brooks, and many others. 
I am not denying that there have been, 
and are, great orators in this country. But, 
owing to the Public School system here, no 
country has, or has had, such an amount The home 
of superficial and uncritical culture spread ajoglff"^' 
over such an enormous geographical area. 
This condition of things intellectual makes 
this the happiest hunting - ground for the 

53 



America and the Americans 

mountebank, the demagogue, and the vari- 
ous other shapes which verbosity may take. 
. Minds trained just enough to enjoy 
gaudy epigrams are easily enslaved and 
carried away by almost every gust of words 
that blows. Hence it is a great tempta- 
tion to be what is called an orator, and 
orators abound in consequence. They are 
one of the crops here, like wheat and cotton! 
There is scarcely a political campaign goes 
by without the appearance of " Women 
Orators," *' Boy Orators," ''Boy Preach- 
ers," " Boy Evangelists," and many other 
varieties of orator, whose silence would be 
golden indeed. No matter in what de- 
partment of life a man may succeed, he is 
called upon to speak, and because he knows 
about one particular thing, he is called upon 
to make speeches upon all sorts of subjects 
utterly unrelated to his specialty. The op- 
portunity to advertise one's self is looked 
upon as the most valuable reward that a 
grateful democracy can offer in return for 
valuable services received. 



54 




V 

Social Contrasts 

AST night we dined at the a nunrt 
house of the representative of 
one of the wealthiest, perhaps 
the wealthiest, families of this 
republic — our host is a woman and a widow. 
Some twenty or more people were present, 
and the plate, the porcelain, the glass, the 
naperie were the most magnificent I have 
ever seen on a private table. Some of the 
same people were there whom I have met 
elsewhere, and, in addition, two titled Eng- 
lishmen, one of whom took the hostess in 
to dinner, despite the fact that a distin- 
guished American, a member of one of the 
late administrations, was present. 

But I am beginning to see that '* Yan- 
kee Doodle comes to town a-riding on his 
pony " mainly in the newspapers, certainly 
not in American drawing-rooms. 

It was not a long dinner, but all the 

55 



America and the Americans 

seasons and all points of the compass con- 
tributed to the bill-of-fare. 

I am told, and one need only dine out 
here, or examine the daily bills-of-fare at 
the best restaurants to believe it, that New 
York is the best market in the world. The 
variety of game, fish, fruit, fresh vegetables, 
and shell-fish that is evidently procurable 
here in season and out of season is un- 
equalled. 

My companion at table was the beauti- 
ful lady of the coronet. On the other side 
of me sat a languid lady who manoeuvred 
the conversation into a confession that she 
was an authoress. Alas for me ! I have 
forgotten her name, her nom de guerre and 
the titles of her books. Of the other peo- 
ple who attracted my attention, one was a 
banker, who is also a politician, owner of 
a racing-stable, and a dog-fancier ; another 
was a clergyman, who also turned out to 
be an Englishman, though in charge of a 
large church here ; another was the wife of 
a Western man of mines, and of fabulous 
wealth, whose origin, I was told, was of 
the most humble ; and two more were the 

56 



Social Contrasts 



wife and daughter of a citizen of Chicago, 
who, having made a fortune there, from 
behind several hundred yards of dry-goods' 
counters, gives these ladies the benefit 
thereof. 

But, be it said, no one would have sus- Good man- 
pected these things of any of the people pZpil."'^ 
mentioned — unless it be perhaps of the 
lady from Chicago — unless one were told 
by their friends. The men do not un- 
buckle their revolvers and put them on 
the table, and the women do not eat with 
their knives ; on the contrary, there is a 
certain subdued air about it all, as though 
the participants at these functions were 
somewhat awed by their grandeur and 
solemnity. 

But even this wears off at the dance to 
which we all adjourn later. 

In a public place, part hall, part res- 
taurant, but handsomely decorated, and 
adorned with plants and flowers, we 
danced — or rather they danced — for I soon American 
found myself unacquainted with the mys- ''"""^• 
teries of American dancing. It is different 
from ours, and different from the English, 

57 



America and the Americans 



and German, also, and I must admit more 
graceful, though in the early morning there 
was a good deal of romping. 

Comparisons are always very shaky 
bridges between one nation and another, 
and so I will not say that at these affairs 
they drink more or less than in France, or 
in England, but they certainly drink a good 
deal, even the women, and principally of 
very cold champagne. It is the dry, brill- 
iant, sparkling wine, which is much like 
the climate here. May they continue to 
love it, and we be spared the phylloxera 
to make it for them. 

I bade my dinner-hostess good-night, and 
also several other hostesses, who, it appears, 
are the official hostesses of the ball, good- 
night as well, and returned to my friend's 
apartments. To-morrow I go with him to 
his father's house in the country, and from 
there to spend the Sunday at a large club 
in the country which he has described to 
me, and which I shall soon see for myself. 

We spend the Friday afternoon and 
night at the country-place of my friend's 
father. It is a beautiful, wild country all 

58 



Social Contrasts 



about us, and the first really quiet and 
well-regulated abode away from the crowd 
that I have visited. Here again is a con- 
tradiction of my impressions, for the house- 
hold and all its appurtenances, the roads 
and the quiet of the woods, bespeak the 
choice of a cultured mind. All this is a 
thousand years in advance of the landing- 
stage, the tram-car, and the profusely 
dressed ladies of the New York streets. 

On the following day we go to spend 
the Sunday at a club which turns out to 
be unique in my experience as a travel- 
ler. Several thousand acres of beautiful 
woods, with a chain of crystal lakes in the American 
centre, and beautifully kept roads around Tn'a^clin. 
the lakes and through the woods, and the ^''^' 
hill-sides dotted here and there, within 
this immense enclosure, with the cottages, 
villas, chateaux, and colonial mansions of 
the members, and in the centre of it all 
a large and well-furnished club-house. 

The instigator of this great social enter- 
prise is an American who made his own 
fortune. There are fishing, boating, and 
out-of-door sports, both in summer and 

59 



America and the Americans 



winter. There are some seventy houses 
here, owned and built by different people, 
who, I understand, buy the land on which 
they build of the club corporation, of 
which the projector is the permanent presi- 
dent. The whole great park is policed and 
lighted and generally cared for by the 
club. We get ourselves comfortably settled 
at the club-house, where there are rooms 
for guests, and then by telephone my 
friend calls up horses, and with two others 
we go for a drive upon the broad, smooth 
roads. These roads are the best I have 
seen anywhere in America, and equal to 
those that Napoleon built for us, which are 
the best in the world. 

As we are driving I tell my friends of 
how, when driving in Central Park, New 
York, I saw a groom on the back of a cart 
driven by two ladies, who not only chewed 
tobacco but squirted the juice on the road 
behind him. ^' Now," I remark, '' if I 
should tell of such an incident, I should be 
called an exaggerator and a detractor of 
the country ! " *^ Ah," they rephed, ^' you 
would give the impression by relating such 
60 



Social Contrasts 



an incident that it is typical, while as a 
matter of fact none of us has ever seen 
anything of the kind." 

I cannot help thinking of this incident, 
however, as an illustration of what I see and 
hear in this country on all sides of me. It 
is a fairy-land of contrasts. One moment Contrasts. 
you are tumbled through streets full of ruts 
and holes, the next moment you are ushered 
into the seclusion of as luxuriously ap- 
pointed an hotel as is to be found in the 
wide world ; in the morning you spend 
half an hour in a torture-chamber, shot 
along on an endless chain and filled with 
tumbling human beings; in the evening 
you dine off gold plate, and drink out of 
crystal vessels ; as you walk up the streets 
you are accosted by a shivering, ragged, 
hollow-cheeked mortal, who claims that he 
has no place to sleep, and has had nothing 
to eat ; in another moment you are in a 
palace, and from scores of boxes women 
lean forth, with the price of thousands of 
good dinners on their arms, shoulders, and 
in their hair. You are driving in comfort 
over well-kept roads, in a magnificent park, 
6i 



America and the Americans 



street 
sprinkling 
by tobacco. 



Dispropor- 
tionate 
■wages. 



and the groom of the fashionably dressed 
lady driving in front of you squirts to- 
bacco-juice under the noses of your horses. 

There are thousands of men and women 
without work and without money in New 
York, and yet to get trained servants is a 
problem so difficult of solution, that many 
people, lam told, have given up in despair 
and sought refuge in hotels and apartment- 
houses. 

Read some of these figures, my economi- 
cal compatriots, and be satisfied to stay at 
home. A good cook, female, is paid from 
one hundred to one hundred and seventy- 
five francs a month, and in large estab- 
lishments much more, and, of course, has 
her board and lodging besides. Waitresses, 
laundresses, chamber-maids receive from 
seventy-five to one hundred and twenty-five 
francs ; coachmen, from two hundred to 
as much as three hundred and seventy-five 
francs ; grooms and gardeners, from one 
hundred and twenty-five to two hundred 
and fifty ; and in-door men-servants — 
there are comparatively few of these — from 
one hundred and twenty-five to two hun- 
62 



Social Contrasts 



service. 



dred and fifty francs, and more, a month. 
For these wages you get, mostly, only a 
mechanical, uninterested, and impersonal indifferent 
service — at least so I am told by the Ameri- 
cans themselves, for of course my small ex- 
perience in such matters is worthless; al- 
though in a large establishment at Newport, 
where there must have been at least ten 
servants, my clothes were neither folded nor 
brushed, and my patent-leather evening 
shoes were returned to me nicely blacked 
instead of polished the morning after I had 
put them out. 

Women, and men as well, seek positions DisUke of 
in swarms where they are paid less than fervtl': 
good servants are paid. The trained nurses 
in the State hospitals, for example, do not 
receive as much in wages as the chamber- 
maids in well-to-do families — being differ- 
ent from the private trained nurses, who 
charge exorbitantly ; the thousands of shop 
and factory girls have longer hours, must 
board and lodge themselves, and yet receive 
smaller wages. 

One hears complaints in England, and 
in France, and sometimes in Italy — more 

63 



America and the Americans 

especially among the foreigners wintering 
there — on this same point, but in those 
countries it is an incidental and occasional 
problem ; but here it is a permanent and 
vexatious factor which embroils and makes 
difficult all attempts at a well-ordered and 
peaceful domestic life. 

And, after all, what is the outcome of 
High wages thcse high wages? Do the servants here 
^aihappT'^' soon graduate into an independent life as the 
^^^^' result of their savings ? Not at all ! They 

save less, I am told, than in France and 
England. They send large sums, in the ag- 
gregate, to their relatives in foreign lands, 
they spend more on dress and amusement, 
and they retire as proprietors of small inns, 
hotels, or farms of their own, far less often. 
Hundreds of the better class of servants, 
who are tempted to come here by the high 
rate of wages, soon discover that greater ex- 
penses accompany the higher wages, and 
in the end the result is about the same, and 
they return home. There are not so many 
inexpe- well-regulated and responsible homes here 
^mistresses, requiring well-trained servants, and there 
are fewer masters and mistresses accus- 

64 



Social Contrasts 



tomed to the care of, and the responsi- 
bility for, servants. 

It is only in the South that they have Domestic 

, , p . _ service not 

had servants for two centuries. In every a profession 
house that 1 have been in, I have taken pains 
to ask my host if any of his servants in- 
doors or out are the children of former 
servants of his, or of his family, and never 
have I received an answer in the affirma- 
tive. 

I recall that when it was proposed to put 
in uniform the men who clean the streets 
in New York, there was a series of jibes and 
jeers and sneers. And this in a republic ! 
This in a land where, at least, one would 
suppose that every form of honest toil would 
be honored, or, at least, respected. Believe 
it not, ye toilers in other lands who look 
with longing eyes toward this land of the 
free. No monarchy, no empire in Europe, 
so exaggerates the value of success, finan- Undemo- 
cial success especially, and so degrades the 7fiabol'\ 
drudgery of commonplace labor as do the 
people of this nation. 

In England the Queen pays her own way 
on every railway journey she takes ; in 

65 



America and the Americans 

France the President of the Republic does 
the same and only a limited number of men 
who are, strictly speaking, officials, travel 
free; but here there are hundreds of rich 
men connected with railways, steam-boats, 
express or telegraph companies, who have 
passes and who travel free, send their 
packages free, their telegrams free, and are 
accorded privileges that no sovereign in 
Europe would dream of demanding for 
himself. 
Great priv- The rich tax the poor here by special 
wfaith. legislation and by a certain freemasonry 
among themselves, much as the powerful 
used to tax the poor in my own country, 
by sheer force of arms. This is one reason 
why personal service of any kind is so dif- 
ficult to procure, because personal service 
and menial labor, while studiously ap- 
plauded politically, are universally under- 
valued socially. These people get higher 
wages here, but they save no more, and they 
have far less consideration shown them, and 
they have less amusement and less comfort, 
and, pray, what is the ultimate value of 
higher wages — '' higher wages," how often 
66 



Social Contrasts 



it has been dinned into my ears, almost as 
often in fact as the statement that we have 
no word for '' home " in French — if there 
results not more consideration, more com- 
fort, more leisure ? Money is not as valu- 
able as water in a desert. High wages are 
useless if you cannot buy consideration, 
rational amusement, and a competency for 
old age with them. For the lower classes 
this country seems in some sort to be a 
desert, socially, where they are thirsty for No weU-de- 
just the cold water of their happier, though ■tlotfo/tte 
perhaps less apparently prosperous, life at 
home. *' Why, you know, sir," said an 
English groom to me here, " a dollar 
honly buys what a shillin' does at 'ome, 
sir, and the masters take no interest in hour 
amusements as they does at 'ome ! " 



servant 
class. 



67 



Puritan 
ism. 




VI 

Conflicting Evidence 

Y two days at the great park in 
the country were of the most 
pleasant. At this time of the 
year many people from New 
York go there to spend the Saturday and 
Sunday. 
A relic 0/ In New York City one cannot " go for a 
shave" after one o'clock on Sunday, and all 
the shops, including the restaurants, cafes, 
and saloons, are closed by law, so far as the 
sale of anything potable is considered. But 
an hour's ride from New York, in almost 
any direction, are numerous country clubs 
which, in the last ten years, have become 
very popular, and where one may indulge 
in out-of-door sports to the heart's con- 
tent. At Newport, too, I found people 
playing tennis and golf on the Sunday. 
But no poor man can take his wife and chil- 
dren to a beer-garden, or drive or walk into 

68 



Conflicting Evidence 



the country to sup, and have a glass of beer 
or wine. 

When our Bernhardt was here, there was Bemkar^t 
much discussion as to whether she was a 
proper person to be received, and ladies 
who gave her receptions, gave it out that 
no unmarried girls were to be invited to 
meet her ! This aspersion of the char- 
acter of the married girls was passed 
over without any chuckling or laughter, 
and yet these Americans often speak of 
the national talent for seeing, and making 
jokes. 

Poor Guilbert received much gratuitous Gumen. 
advertising because she appeared once or 
twice in private before a select number of 
the ' ' leaders of New York Society. " And 
yet the newspapers who assailed both her 
and the ladies who went to hear her, pub- 
lish Sunday editions replete with illustra- 
tions and paragraphs concerning criminals 
of high and low degree. 

When the statue of the Greek Slave was 

exhibited in Cincinnati, a delegation of 

clergymen was sent to view it, that they 

might make a report to their presumably 

69 



America and the Americans 



Chaste 
Diana. 



Hypocrisy 
or self- 
deception. 



less expert fellow-citizens as to the propri- 
ety of going to see it. 

An undraped statue of Diana on the 
top of the Madison Square Garden in New 
York caused much criticism on the score 
of its indecency ) and yet at several of 
the public balls, one of which I attended 
for an hour or two, women appeared in 
costumes, and behaved in a manner, that 
made my youthful memories of the Mabille 
seem sombre and saltless. 

So far as my own experience goes, it has 
seemed to me that much of the immorality 
here among the upper classes is rather 
mental than physical. The intercourse be- 
tween men and women is very free, or so 
it appeared to me ; but the worst feature of 
it is the stories and slanders that they 
themselves circulate about one another. 
A certain unconscious hypocrisy is preva- 
lent among the people of all classes. An 
instance of this is the constant reference 
one hears — I suppose for the benefit of the 
poorer classes — to the immense cost of the 
standing armies in France, in Germany, 
and in Italy, and how men are obliged to 
70 



Conflicting Evidence 



serve in them at an immense loss to agri- 
culture and commerce. But place the 
figures of the cost to France of her army 
alongside of these figures, my French 
friends : 

In the year 1880 the United States paid 250,802 Pensions. 
pensioners the sum of 286,202.700 francs. 

In the year 18S5 the United States paid 345,125 
pensioners the sum of 328,468,530 francs. 

In the year 1890 the United States paid 537,944 
pensioners the sum of 532,469,450 francs. 

In the year 1895 the United States paid 970,524 
pensioners the sura of 704,796,805 francs. 

Less than thirty thousand persons short of 
a milHon, in this total population of sixty- 
seven millions, receive pensions, and these 
pensions constitute a drain on the national 
exchequer each year of 704,796,805 francs. 
If one deducts the negroes and the for- 
eign population settled here since the war, 
who of course receive no pensions, it is 
easy to see that almost one out of every 
forty-five or fifty of all the inhabitants is 
paid a bounty by the State. This sum 
paid out in pensions each year is almost 
one-half of the total value of the exports 
71 



America and the Americans 



National 
extrava- 
gance. 



Lacking in 
economy. 



from the United States to the United 
Kingdom of Great Britain in one year, 
and Great Britain is by far their largest 
customer, and is more than one-eighth of 
the sum of the total domestic exports for 
the year. As a colossal piece of political 
extravagance, this surpasses anything ever 
dreamed of in the history of nations up to 
this time. 

While the Democratic party robs New 
York City, the Republican party robs New 
York State, and some of the above-men- 
tioned pensioners rob the United States, 
the people in Cincinnati are trying to de- 
termine whether they are too good to look 
at the Greek Slave, and the citizens of New 
York are blushing with shame at the sight 
of Sarah Bernhardt in respectable drawing- 
rooms. And these are the people who gave 
us Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and Oliver 
Wendell Holmes ! Pray, what has become 
of the national sense of humor ? 

The nation, Hke so many of the individ- 
uals composing it, has grown rich with start- 
ling rapidity, but they do not know how to 
take care of, or how to use, their money. 



72 



Conflicting Evidence 



Economy, the touchstone of all the arts 
of civilization, is an unknown quantity 
here. 

Said a distinguished American publisher 
to me : '' The people in New York whom 
I pity are not the poor, not the laboring 
men, and the small people on small in- 
comes ; but those who have incomes ranging 
from four to seven thousand dollars a year." 
There is no place for them in this great city, 
it appears. Rents are too high, the wages 
of servants are too high, fuel, food, and 
clothing are too high, to permit them to live 
with such surroundings and such comforts 
as their incomes ought to give them. Cer- 
tain social, intellectual, and charitable de- 
mands are made upon them that no one 
thinks of making upon the poor, and they 
are put to it to keep their heads above 
water in consequence. 

This is not true of Paris, it is certainly smaiun 
not true of Berlin, of Brussels, of Rome, TurUe. 
or of Amsterdam, and I doubt if it be true 
of London. It is assuredly a curious com- 
ment upon a democracy, that in its greatest 
city only the dwellers in the two extremes, 

73 



America and the Americans 

tenements and palaces, live in comfortable 
financial security. 

This is a country of extremes and con- 
trasts; no traveller, I fancy, would gainsay 
that. Everything that they take up here 
is exaggerated. In Paris one sees many 
women wearing no skirts at all when rid- 
ing their bicycles. Here, in the upper 
part of New York, and in the parks, at 
Newport, Saratoga, and other places, one 
sees many women who wear skirts, but 
skirts of just that degree of shortness which 
makes their wearers more conspicuous than 
if they wore no skirts at all. It is the dif- 
ference between the bare legs of an Ital- 
ian fisher woman, or a Swiss washerwoman, 
and the black - stockinged and gartered 
legs of the vaudeville stage, or the lubri- 
cous poster. This whole matter is subjec- 
tive, not objective. It is a question of the 
The seen imagination. It is not what is seen, but 
Suggested, what is suggested that plays havoc with 
decency. 

It may be the climate, which is highly ex- 
citing, or this newly made wealth, or the de- 
sire to surpass others, but whatever the cause, 

74 



Conflicting Evidence 



there is a tendency to carry to extremes 
such customs as they adopt. The ladies 
and gentlemen one sees at the various sum- 
mer-resorts are very attractive to the eye, 
but the masculinity of the garments worn 
by the women, and the effeminacy of the 
costumes of some of the men, make the scene 
appear, somehow, not quite natural. It was 
rather as if a number of people were taking 
part in a play given out of doors. 

The men here are good sportsmen for all First-rate 
that. There are probably more good shots '^"'''''"'''' 
with rifle, shot - gun, and revolver within 
the boundaries of this republic than in any 
other country in the world. American 
horses have won at the best races in France 
and in England. At France and England's 
own game of court-tennis an American is 
facile princeps, and in track athletics and 
in yachting they have only lately given 
fresh proof of their superiority. The re- 
cords for the high jump, and the broad 
jump, for hurdle racing, and the half mile, 
and mile flat race, and I believe all the 
records for skating and bicycle racing are 
held by Americans. They have no equals 

75 



America and the Americans 

at all these out-of-door sports, unless it be 
the English, and even their equality is 
stoutly denied here. 

But even in their sports it seems to be less 
love of sport than love of personal distinc- 
tion and display that actuates the majority. 
They play not for the mental and physical 
refreshment so much, as for the excitement 
of surpassing someone else. 

Time and time again have I remarked 
upon the fact that it is a rare thing to find, 
even in the country, people walking for the 
mere pleasure of gentle, unexciting exercise. 
All over France, Germany, and England 
you see people by the hundred, on any free 
day, walking in the country roads, lanes, 
and by-paths. Here, no such inconspicu- 
ous, unexciting exercise is popular. There 
seems to be a certain feverishness of rivalry 
even in the way they take their exercise. 
sport at the One of the results of this is an endless 
series of dissensions, quarrels, and discus- 
sions, not among the professionals alone, 
but among the young gentlemen of the 
universities and the athletic clubs. In- 
deed the game of foot-ball was played at 

76 



universi- 
ties. 



Conflicting Evidence 



last, among these young gentleman, with 
so much bad temper, with so many personal 
encounters, and with such ceaseless accusa- 
tions of cheating, foul play, and bad faith, 
against one another, that it was seriously 
proposed to stop the intercollegiate games 
altogether. 

All this is of course disgraceful, and for 
it there is no excuse whatever, unless it be 
that these so-called young gentlemen are 
not gentlemen at all. 

There seems to be a lack of the compara- 
tive, and of the intermediate, of any sense 
of the value of the mean between extremes 
in everything. 

The newspapers banish the comparative, 
and use only superlatives. Men are either Su/>eria- 
<*rich" or "poor;" speeches are "elo- 
quent," and speakers are " orators ; " fire- 
men and policemen are ' ' heroes ; ' ' shops 
have ' ' splendid " or " magnificent ' ' dis- 
plays in their windows ; unknown country 
clergymen pay " touching tributes " to de- 
ceased parishioners ; shopkeepers in pro- 
vincial towns are " wealthy merchants ; " 
men of wealth who die almost always leave 

77 



tives. 



America and the Americans 



** several millions" — generally it is "ten 
millions ; ' ' actors and actresses and pub- 
lic speakers ''receive ovations;" Mrs. 
Jones, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Robinson 
receive their guests '' attired in lovely crea- 
tions," and "wearing the well-known" 
Jones, Brown, or Robinson "jewels;" 
lawyers make ' ' masterly pleas ; ' ' doctors 
receive ' ' enormous fees ; ' ' the sale of a 
popular book "runs up into the tens of 
thousands ; " of the newspapers that have 
" the largest circulation in the world " 
" Smashing there is no end ; and the ' ' smashing of rec- 
ords ' ' tliat goes on in this land of super- 
latives in every department of life, es- 
pecially in the Weather Bureau, which 
' ' smashes ' ' at least one * ' record ' ' a day 
every day in the year, must keep the poor 
statisticians very busy. 

This is all of a kind, with the furi- 
ous race for wealth, and the striving for 
victory at any price, which in the one 
case interferes with the quiet and com- 
fort of domestic life, and in the other 
breeds constant discord in many of their 
athletic competitions. Success is not very 

78 



Conflicting Evidence 



closely scrutinized, but failure is given lit- 
tle quarter. 

Though I have been treated everywhere, 
and by everybody, with courtesy, and often 
with prodigal hospitality, one phase of my 
character, I have often noticed, is looked 
upon with disapproval, and sometimes with 
something akin to contempt, and that is 
my contentment ! Why do I not speculate. Horror of 
why do I not invest in this or that ? No- ^iZnu' 
body can understand here that a man can 
really have enough ! There must be either 
a vein of duphcity, or a streak of insanity 
in a man of forty-five who is willing to 
live on his income, to serve on the various 
committees of his little country town, to 
look after the village school, to superintend 
the repairing of the roads, and to see to it 
that his farm-buildings are in order and 
his few tenants comfortable and happy. I 
am asked why I do not run for office, why Puzziedby 
I do not start a newspaper, if I have bought 'IZt'^'^' 
shares in African gold mines, why I do not 
build tenement-houses, why, in short, I do 
not try to make myself famous or enor- 
mously rich ! 

79 



America and the Americans 



Apparently it is scarcely reputable to be 
contented. I dare not reply that to be 
conspicuous politically, or to be prominent 
socially, or to be very rich, here, in this 
land of freedom, seems to me to be about 
the most awkward thing that can happen 
to a man, who has not the hide of a rhi- 
noceros ; but if I did so reply, that would 
be my honest conclusions of the whole 
matter. 

The rich man in America carries the 
weight of all his wealth as a handicap in 
any political race. In any other country 
in the world it would help him, because the 
constituency to which he would appeal 
would consider that his wealth was a mark 
of success and a sign of ability. But let 
an Astor or a Vanderbilt or a Rockefeller 
The handi- OX a Belmont run for office here, or let him 
'wealth. even be appointed to office by the Presi- 
dent, and there is a chorus of envy, jeal- 
ousy, and malicious criticism. They are 
all struggling for wealth, and they cer- 
tainly toady to some extent to men who 
have great wealth, but, on the other hand, 
they seem to take a peculiar, and, to me, 
80 



Conflicting Evidence 



incomprehensible delight in preventing 
rich men from exercising their abilities in 
public and diplomatic office. 

In the case of one candidate for the 
presidency, a photograph of his rather 
large house in Washington was used 
throughout the West and South as a cam- Wealth and 
paign document against him. One may ^''^'^'"' 
say, with the approval of every astute 
politician in America, that the nomination 
and election of a millionnaire to the office 
of President of the United States would be 
absolutely impossible. To call a newspaper 
a rich men's newspaper, or a prominent 
railroad official a rich men's servant, or a 
great corporation lawyer a rich men's coun- 
sel, is enough to discredit him in certain 
sections of the country. 

Ninety years ago the founder of the 
Astor fortune was a poor boy in the streets 
of New York ; fifty years ago the founder 
of the Gould fortune was an unknown sur- 
veyor; twenty years ago the Vanderbilts 
were not known in New York society ; the 
Belmonts came to New York in the thirties, 
and the Standard Oil fortunes are all in the 
8i 



America and the Americans 



Unaccount- 
able jeal- 
ousy. 



European 
Socialists 
dijjferent. 



possession of men whose fathers were un- 
known in financial circles twenty-five years 
ago. Why then be jealous of men and 
women whose money is new enough to suit 
the most stringent American test ? Would 
that I were able to answer my own ques- 
tion ! This hot haste to get rich, and 
this fierce envy of those who are rich 
presents an ethical problem too subtle for 
solution by me. In France and Germany 
and England and Italy we can under- 
stand the men who have no wish for great 
wealth for themselves or for others, and 
who declaim against wealth as a wrong ; 
but it is difficult to understand men who 
cry out for more money, more silver, more 
paper, more anything that will buy things, 
and then turn upon those who have money 
to revile them ! They are infants in m^at- 
ters of economics, these good people ; 
nothing else can explain their attitude. 



82 




VII 
On Being Busy 

JNTIL one has been in this coun- 
try some months, and has seen 
at close quarters the methods of 
the business and professional 
men, it is impossible to picture to one's self 
the almost fanatical use of all sorts of me- 
chanicaf contrivances for the saving of 
labor, and, as I am inclined to believe", for 
the wasting of time. 

On the train going to Boston I noticed 
one gentleman who had with him a youth 
with a type- writing machine. During al- T;:eaMhe^ 
most the whole time we were in the train Tjpf'^'' 
he was dashing off what appeared to be an '^'''''''• 
enormous correspondence. While I was 
not engaged in conversation with my two 
Boston friends, I watched his proceedings 
with interest. 

Some of the letters were very short, not 
more than a dozen lines, others were, no 

S3 



America and the Americans 

doubt, much longer. The process was about 
as follows : A letter was taken up and read 
through by the gentleman. Then a sheet 
of paper was put into the machine, adjusted 
and re-adjusted, and the secretary pro- 
ceeded to play on his keys, lifting the 
machine every now and then to look at 
what he had written, while the gentleman 
dictated. Twice his dictation was not to 
his satisfaction, the sheet in the machine 
was taken out, and a fresh one substituted, 
and the letter re-written. The letter once 
written, the secretary read it over, then 
the master read it over, usually made some 
corrections, and finally signed it. Then 
an envelope was put into the machine, 
an address printed on it, the envelope 
taken out, the letter picked up and put 
into the envelope, the envelope sealed, and 
the task for that letter was done. 
Time and The wholc attention of two men was de- 
voted to the one letter, and the time con- 
sumed, the machine-power used, and the 
expense of the labor required, were out of 
all proportion to what was accomplished. 
An accomplished secretary with such a 

84 



labor 
wasted. 



Oh Being Busy 



bundle of letters, and a few notes on each 
by his master, could have disposed of this 
correspondence in one-third to one-half 
the time, while occupying the time and at- 
tention of one, instead of two, men. 

In every office of any importance one where 
finds a type-writer. They are used in writ- tUt^fr% 
ing letters of every description, and often pfjf. 
letters demanding, by all the laws of cour- 
tesy, a reply in the hand of the master or 
his secretary. In many cases the manipu- 
lator of the type- writing machine is also a 
shorthand writer. When this is the case, 
letters and communications of all kinds are 
dictated to the shorthand writer, who then 
retires and prints them off on his machine, 
brings them back to be read over and 
signed, and then puts them in their enve- 
lopes, and addresses them. 

No one denies that in a great office there 
is a mass of matter that can be turned off 
quickly and properly by the use of these 
machines. But there is a mania for their 
use here, and it is considered ''business- 
like" and suggestive of tremendous and 
rushing employment on the part of the 

85 



America and the Americans 



stealing 
time. 



Haste and 
waste. 



user to employ them on all occasions. The 
telephone, too, jingles its summons in every 
office and in every house, and the amusing 
side of it all is, that men most devoted to 
these devices for saving time, will waste time 
every day in ways that no busy Frenchman, 
German, or Englishman would permit for a 
moment. 

In offices furnished with all the labor- 
saving machines that this most ingenious 
people have devised, men come to sit 
down, and chat and smoke by the half- 
hour. Often the office-door opens to admit 
the intruder directly into the presence of 
this supposedly busy man. He cannot es- 
cape, and his time is consumed by the half- 
hourful by friends and acquaintances who 
have nothing better to do. 

Men who rush off from a hasty break- 
fast to board an express train, to be whirled 
to their telephone and type-writer, often 
employ a good proportion of time, when 
in the city, doing small errands, and in 
visiting, and being visited by other busi- 
ness men, who have also rushed into the 
city at the rate of a mile a minute, carry- 

S6 



On Being Busy 



ing an undigested breakfast in their stom- 
achs, which they try vainly to soothe with 
a cigar consumed in a smoke - reeking 
*' smoking-car." 

It is considered symbolic of success to 
*' have no time ! " While the very test of 
true success is, of course, to prove yourself 
master of time ; for if one is the slave of 
time, he is perforce the slave to the thou- 
sand -and-one devils that haste has in its 
train. 

I have done business in Paris, in Lon- Business 
don, and in New York, and to a small ex- '"'^^''^'' . 
tent in Berlin, but I refrain from giving my 
own opinion, though I may quote two 
Americans on this subject. One is a New 
York banker, the other a New York lawyer. 
The first told me that he could do more 
business in London, or in Berlin, in half 
an hour, than he could do in New York in 
two hours; and the other, the lawyer, 
said the same of London, with the differ- 
ence that he made the ratio a half-hour to 
one hour. Letters, the lawyer said, were 
answered more promptly, engagements 
were kept more punctually, and busy men 

87 



America and the Americans 

refused absolutely to have their fixed hours 
for work disturbed or interfered with. 

The Americans have far more mechanical 
devices, and make more use of them, than 
any other people, but these cannot com- 
pensate for the lack of trained, and faith- 
ful, personal service. 

I may not mention the name of my 
distinguished friend, a French banker 
in Paris, but the political, social, and 
strictly professional work that, with the 
aid of two secretaries, he turns off every 
day between the hours of ten and three — 
just five hours — it would require a dozen 
telephones, and as many type-writers, 
merely to enumerate. No Frenchman, 
and no Englishman, holding public office, 
no matter how important, would fail to 
A guestion answcr a civil note promptly, and by the 
hand of a secretary ; here, on the contrary, 
one receives notes and letters, even of a 
personal nature, dictated to a type-writer. 

No amount of machinery can atone for a 
lack of method, and for the systematiza- 
tion of the business side of life, by impera- 
tive and unbreakable rules. Here, there 

88 



of civility. 



On Being Busy 



is a good deal of work of all kinds done at 
hap-hazard, and the consequent waste of 
time is enormous. 

The critics of all this will not remember 
how new is everything. I keep forgetting 
it myself. Fifty years ago Harvard Uni- Fifty yean 
versity had only two hundred students; '^^''' 
schooling, even of an elementary kind, was 
difficult to get ; libraries and books were 
scarce ; a German — and seventy-five years 
ago a Greek — text-book was a rarity ; edu- 
cated and cultivated men were few, and 
even now a trained mind is not essential 
to political success, or even to the holding 
of the highest political offices, hence even 
now the demand for such is comparatively 
small. 

How can one expect then an army of 
experienced clerks, hundreds of competent 
private secretaries, thousands of well-trained 
servants of every description ? It is lack of Waste of 
these that makes a methodical life difficult, 
and which interferes at every step with a 
man's getting the very best out of him- 
self, at the smallest cost to himself of 
worry and waste. 

89 



America and the Americans 



English 
snobbery. 



Then, too, besides the scarcity of the 
higher grades of labor, there is a very 
general disinclination on the part of even 
those who can afford it, to pay others for 
doing what, by any possibility, they can do 
for themselves. Hence hundreds of men are 
wasting time and strength, and decreasing 
their own ability to do their best, by in- 
sisting upon expending themselves in doing 
what others could do as well for them. 

In England — and I may be pardoned if 
I am prejudiced in my remarks on the sub- 
ject of America's great-grandmother ^ — 
there is a pretentious affectation of idleness. 
To hear many young men talk in England, 
one would imagine that they never did 
any work, that none of their ancestors had 
any, and that none of their 
any to do. The height of 
"is to refer to, or to talk. 



A merican 
affectation. 



ever done 
friends had 
*'bad form 
*'shop." This I deem a ridiculous af- 
fectation on the part of any class, in a na- 
tion of shopkeepers. 

In America there is, however, an equally 
ridiculous affectation of appearing to be 
busy. In England polite snobbery dic- 



90 



On Being Busy 



tates the question : '' How are you amusing 
yourself?" In America polite snobbery 
dictates the question : " What are you do- 
ing ? ' ' Everybody is, out of politeness, 
supposed to be over head and ears busy. 
Busy in trade, busy in his profession, busy 
socially ! You are continually hearing both 
men and women say : ^* I really must give 
up some of my engagements ; I have no 
time for anything ! " All this is the more 
ridiculous when one comes to see how very 
restricted is the variety of social distrac- 
tion, even in New York — while outside of 
New York and Washington, the social 
functions in other cities are not only of 
a restricted but of a somewhat provincial 
kind. 

But it is the fashion to be busy, to be Pretence oj 
overwhelmed with engagements, to be 
pressed for time, to be driven to death, in 
short, by one's terrible social, professional, 
or business responsibilities. In some cases 
it is true, but true because the sufferers are 
incompetent to control their own affairs; 
but in the great majority of instances it is a 
huge joke or a seriously assumed affectation. 

91 



Lack of 
recreation. 



A patho- 
logical 
luager. 



America and the Americans 

This hypocrisy, however, brings many 
evils in its wake. So many people object 
to being suspected of having any time on 
their hands, that they will not take recre- 
ation openly, even when they can do so as 
well as not. 

A friend here tells me that his physician, 
who is a recognized authority in the med- 
ical world and the author of one or two 
books, tells him that the great cities of 
America are the paradise of nervous dis- 
eases, and that the use of sedatives is far 
more prevalent here than in any other 
country in the world. 

I have no statistics, and the observation 
I am about to make may have no warning 
significance, but one day an acquaintance 
here, who knew that I was interested in 
American peculiarities, offered to bet me 
five dollars each day, for two weeks, that 
each morning there would be an account 
of a suicide in the newspapers, and twenty- 
five dollars that at the end of the two weeks 
there would have been not less than ten 
suicides noted. I declined the first bet, 
but took the second ; and lost, for there 



92 



On Being Busy 



were in those fourteen days eleven suicides. 
This may mean much, or it may mean little, 
as being merely a coincidence, but it is a 
fact that I have deemed worthy of jotting 
down, as it came under my own personal 
observation, and is not a tale invented for 
the delectation of the unwary traveller. 

One prime reason why Americans are 
considered by Europeans to be under-cul- 
tivated, is their very general inability to 
hold any sort of intercourse by correspond- American 
ence without making blunders — social 'dentT'"" 
blunders, and blunders arising from lack 
of training and education. The most 
commonplace shades and gradations of dif- 
ference in one's correspondence with people 
who occupy different relations to us seem to 
be totally unfamiliar to many Americans, 
whose wealth and position would imply in 
any other country just such knowledge. 

In Rome, London, and Berlin, more Continent 
than one unofficial note, from one of the '''^^''"^• 
under-secretaries at the American Embas- 
sies of these cities, has been passed about 
as a sample of American ignorance and 
American bad manners. 



93 



America and the Americans 



Letter 
from Haj 
vard. 



The type' 

writer's 

popularity. 



After my visit to Harvard College I 
received a note about some trifling matter 
from one of the students there, who is in 
the highest class, whose education indeed 
was supposed in a month or two to be fin- 
ished. In it two words were misspelled, 
the punctuation was done evidently by 
accident, and the phrases and the forms of 
address and closing were such as a French 
boy ten years old might well have been 
ashamed of. 

On the other hand, I have a large bundle 
of the most charming and witty notes and 
letters from Americans. What I am re- 
marking upon is merely that the great mass 
of people in some sort of society in Amer- 
ica do not know how to write either notes 
or letters, and that many men and women 
holding prominent positions and possessing 
large wealth, write you notes and letters 
unworthy of a first-rate head -gardener or a 
country shopkeeper. 

This, I think, is partly the secret of the 
American love of the type-writer, the tele- 
phone, and the telegraph. It not only 
saves time, as they think at least, but it 



94 



On Being Busy 



also saves an exposure of their own igno- 
rance. 

It is a fallacy repeated in each genera- 
tion, and believed by the superficial of each 
generation, that personal service will be Personal 
more and more supplanted by mechanical Vhanicai 
service ; that the steam-locomotive engine ^^'^'""^''' 
will do away with horses and men ; that 
the factory will do away with the hands ; 
that the reaper will banish the laborers ; 
that the type-writer and telephone will 
banish the pen, and so on. But these in- 
ventions come, are welcomed, are used, 
and still there is a subtle quality in human 
nature that prevents the banishment of 
men by machines. 

The Americans are a new people, and 
they like new things, having no prejudice Love of 
of tradition against them, and they, more 
easily than other nations, become the vic- 
tims of this fallacy. 

The English, dull as they are, have seen 
the futility of this theory ; so, too, have the 
French, and to an even greater degree have 
the Germans, while the Japanese are learn- 
ing it, as they learn everything, with the 



novelties. 



95 



America and the Americans 

9 

instinctive mental quickness of their race. 
Methods of Little England, little Germany, little Japan, 
'^ciai'Tivais. train their men rather than their machines, 
and the commerce of the world, when ana- 
lyzed, shows the results in spite of the tre- 
mendous advantages that this fabulously 
wealthy — in natural resources — country 
has. 

I prophesy that twenty-five years from 
this time, machinery will not be used so 
indiscriminately to take the place of men 
in this country, and that far more men and 
women will know how to write their own 
letters than is now the case. 

This is pre-eminently the land of free 
schools, free education, and free opportu- 
nity, but there is a subtle association of 
ideas needed to give refinement. 

There are generations of men and wom- 
en in Italy, France, Austria, and England, 
who carry on, and bequeath to others, the 
intangible laws of good manners. This is 
lacking here. 

On the other hand, there is no lack of 
willingness to learn or to imitate good 
models. But the area is so great, prece- 

96 



On Being Busy 



dents are so few, genuine superiority so Lacko/ 
loath to assert itself, and regarded with ^'''"'^'*'*'' 
such jealousy, even when it is recognized, 
that people are much at sea for teachers 
and examples in matters of manners. Hence 
the stranger is often surprised to find an 
eminent lawyer, a secretary of legation, a 
clergyman, a member of the cabinet — 
these being instances that have come under 
my personal notice — apparently unable to 
write a note accepting an invitation to din- 
ner, and ignorant of the proper way to ad- 
dress, and to phrase, a letter to one with 
whom they are only slightly acquainted. 
At first one puts it down to boorishness, 
but the genial reception later, and the 
hearty good-will of the man, when you 
meet him, prove conclusively enough that it 
is merely ignorance of the finer shadings of 
social intercourse, and nothing worse than 
that. 

The constant and almost universal use 
of the telephone, the telegraph, and the 
type-writer, accustom people less and less 
to the more ceremonious forms of inter- 
course. The drops of the ''oil of glad- 

97 



course. 



America and the Americans 

ness " which soften and make smooth the 
The refine- interchange of formalities between man 
7ocTaihiter- and man, when the pen is ready and the 
amenities of social life part of one's very 
being, are not to be found here. They 
have no time — so they say ! They work so 
hard — so they affirm ! Competition is so 
bitter, ** we must hustle," ** we must hurry 
up ; " capital phrase that, '* hurry up ! " 
and so on with the excuses. Perhaps these 
statements are true. Who knows ! Cer- 
tainly, I do not, but my grandmother was 
wont to tell me, alas ! all too many years 
ago, that ^^ qui s' excuse y s' accuse I ^^ 



98 




VIII 

'American Politics 

URING my stay in New York 
I met a number of politicians. 
One in particular I remember. 
A man a few years younger 
than myself, who has already played a 
prominent part, and who was running over 
— his enemies say, " slopping over ' ' — with 
opinions and knowledge of political mat- 
ters, both new and old. Later, on my jour- 
ney to Boston, I was introduced on the very 
steps of the train to two Boston men, both 
of them holding office, the one in Wash- a sojourn 
ington, the other in his own State, and )ngionl ' 
during our five hours' journey together they 
told me much that was of interest. i 

I must confess, too, that not long ago I 
was in Washington in a semi-official capac- 
ity, for a few weeks, and much that I saw 
and heard there makes part of my present 
impressions. 

99 



America and the Americans 



Personali- 
ties of long 
ago. 



The first 
presidents. 



In reading the newsi^apers — more de- 
tailed notes of which I*'have collected in 
the latter part of my journal — one notices 
first of all the out-spoken la^vlessness of 
pretty much everything that- deals with 
political controversy. One would imagine 
that no single man in political Hfe is either 
trusted or respected. This method of deal- 
ing with one's political opponents is, I 
found, nothing new. 

A century ago, shortly after Jay's treaty 
with England was Signed, Washington, 
whose name is now received everywhere 
with something little short of reverence, 
was dealt with in mucii the same, or 
even in worse, fashion. He was called a 
''thief," ''the American Caesar," "the 
step-father of his country," accused of 
having committed murder, and said to 
"have the ostentation of an Eastern pa- 
shaw." Thomas Paine wrote of him : 
"As for you, sir, treacherous in private 
friendship, and a hypocrite in public life, 
the world will be puzzled to decide wheth- 
er you are an apostate or an impostor." 
After his retirement from ofiice another 



lOO 



American Politics 



wrote : '^ Now will political iniquity cease 
to be legalized by a name. ' ' 

Thomas Jefferson was called a ' ' cow- 
ard " and a '' runaway," and his turn for 
philosophizing was ridiculed when he was 
pictured — if he should be elected President 
— as surprised by a foreign minister while 
''in the act of anatomizing the kidneys 
and glands of an African, to find out why 
the negro is black and odoriferous." 

Adams was called an ''aristocrat," "a Political 

, » > / / 1 • I > aHtenities 

monocrat, "an anglomaniac; was ac- at the birth 
cused of having taken a bribe from the ^^ ^'^^''^-y- 
British for his celebrated defence of the 
British soldiers after the so-called Boston 
massacre, and was said to be desirous of 
establishing a monarchy with his sons to 
succeed him. 

Such was the treatment of the first three 
presidents of the United States. But they 
were not alone. No one escaped. Jay 
was burned in efiigy. Franklin was called 
a "rake," and twitted with being the fa- 
ther of illegitimate children, and also with 
having bequeathed a lot of bad debts to a 
hospital for a legacy. Hamilton was ac- 

lOI 



America and the Americans 



The news- 
papers reap 
the conse- 
quences. 



cused of almost as many unmentionable 
crimes as was Napoleon, while Gerry, 
Marshall, Gallatin, Monroe, Madison, and 
far too many more to enumerate, suffered 
intolerable indignities of verbal insult. 

This was then called, and still goes by 
the name of, the freedom of the press. In 
defence of this privilege to insult and to 
injure your enemy, it is said that thereby 
rascality is exposed, and all underhand 
deahngs made impossible. As a matter 
of fact, however, the result has been to 
leave few newspapers in the United States 
with much power for good, or with much 
ability to do harm. All their partisan ti- 
rades, all their insulting superlatives, all 
their libellous accusations are read indiffer- 
ently, and considered merely part of the 
political game. The newspapers are not 
bribed, at least not directly, I believe, but 
most of them have sold their power for 
either good or evil, by an unrestrained 
abuse of their privileges. 

Even in Massachusetts, Garrison, Phil- 
lips, Webster, and Sumner were all of them 
insulted and humiliated in their own State 



American Politics 



and by their own constituents. I presume 
that there are some bad men in American 
politics, and no doubt they deserve casti- 
gation at the hands of the newspapers ; 
but surely it is a pity that the intelligent 
foreigner should be led to believe, by the is every poi- 
general tone of the public press in this VasTaU 
country, that every politician is a rascal. 

This state of things is due, first, to the 
intense and widespread envy of success 
which is noticeable here in all departments 
of life; and second, to the fact that un- 
doubtedly an ever larger number of men, 
particularly in the State and federal 
senates, procure their elections, or are 
supposed to procure their elections, by the 
direct use of, or the indirect influence of, 
their money, or that of their friends. At 
any rate, it is certainly true that the per- 
centage of rich men in the United States 
Senate to-day is out of all proportion to 
the wealth of their constituents. 

The federal senators are elected not 
directly by the people, but indirectly by 
the State legislatures. The State legislat- 
ures are a smaller, and more easily influ- 
103 



Men 



America and the Americans 

enced, body than the whole body of 
electors, and hence, if there be bribery 
and corruption, it is more conveniently 
brought to bear at that point. 

I expressed some surprise to my fellow- 
passengers on the journey to Boston, that 
the constituencies themselves do not pre- 
fer to be represented politically by their 
best men. *' Sometimes they do," was 
The better the reply, but often the best men refuse to 
serve. They do not fear abuse and criti- 
cism for themselves, but few men can bear 
to have their wives, and even their chil- 
dren and their servants, surreptitiously 
photographed and interviewed, and, not 
infrequently, maligned and insulted. 

When a man stops to think that his 
whole family history as far back as it can 
be traced, that his personal griefs, that his 
most private domestic relations, that his 
business and professional concerns, that his 
intimate friends, will all be made the theme 
of jest, satire, and caricature, he hesitates 
before offering himself and all these for 
such a sacrifice. 

Another feature of American politics 

104 



American Politics 



rivalries. 



which the Americans themselves, with their 
usual indifferent good-humor, do not recog- Sectional 
nize, is the rapidly increasing differences 
between the geographical sections of their 
enormous territory. 

In days gone by, the principal rivalry 
was between Massachusetts and Virginia, 
representing respectively Northern and 
Southern feeling. Now the rivalry is be- 
tween the great agricultural States of the 
middle West and the great manufacturing 
States of the Northeast ; between the silver- 
producing States of the West and the gold- 
possessing States of the East ; between the 
States where wealth and comfort and 
culture are defending their own stability 
and demanding a solid foundation of con- 
servative finance, and the States, like 
Texas in the Southwest, and the farming 
communities in the middle and Northwest- 
ern States, where there is little money, and 
v/here the population, with little to lose and 
everything to gain, takes up with the most 
visionary theories of misunderstood social- 
ism and unsound finance. 

It is to be remembered in this connection 



105 



America and the Americans 



that each of these States, no matter how 
great or how small the population, how 
rich or how poor in natural or acquired 
wealth ; no matter whether its population 
is native American, or composed of a 
majority of negroes, or of lately settled 
immigrants ; no matter whether educated 
or illiterate, is represented in the federal 
Senate by two members, no less and no 
A curiosity more. And, according to the Constitution, 
'stiiuiion" no One of the States can be deprived of 
equal representation in the Senate with 
all the others. This is making unequal 
things equal with a vengeance. 

As an instance of what might happen, 
there are ten States whose total population 
is less than that of New York City and its 
environments alone, and whose total wealth 
is also much less than that of New York 
City ; and yet they are represented in the 
United States Senate by twenty votes, 
while the whole of New York State, which 
includes New York City, has only two 
votes. In short, almost one-fourth of the 
voting power in the United States Senate 
is in the hands of men who represent a 
io6 



The consc' 
quences. 



American Politics 



population smaller than that of New York 
City. This is already a source of incon- 
venience, and might well become, I should 
think, the cause of grievances that could 
only be settled after a serious disturbance 
of the machinery of government. 

Aside from the spasmodic enthusiasm 
aroused at intervals by the State and federal 
elections, there seems to be little interest 
taken in politics by many Americans. 

In England you are bored to death in Ajnerkan 

1 • ^ -I . <• and conti- 

every smoking-room, at every dinner, and nentaiin- 
at every club, by the political talk, and in poiTtks" 
France there is a very lively interest, on 
the part of almost everybody, in politics, 
while every Italian nowadays is a politi- 
cian. 

Here, I am told, in the large cities, it is 
almost impossible to get the very class of 
men to vote who have most at stake in 
the continuance of good government. Oc- 
casionally there is an outburst of indigna- 
tion on the part of the better classes, and 
there follows an overturn, but matters soon 
quiet down again, and the mice come back 
to play in the public granary. 

107 



America and the Americans 



vote. 



One never hears of the debauchery of 
poHtics in the United States without hear- 
ing at the same time many allusions to the 
The Irish Irish, and the solid Irish vote. It may be 
my ignorance and my inexperience, but 
having seen something of the Irish politi- 
cian in his native lair, New York, I am 
bound to confess that I found him an 
agreeable fellow. 

The native, half-humorous, indulgence 
of success, no matter what its origin, is ap- 
plied to these politicians. If a man have 
money, and ability to use its power, great 
latitude is given to him in matters of per- 
sonal morality. Sometimes even the eccle- 
siastical world is suspected of overlooking 
faults in large contributors, that are con- 
demned mercilessly in the incompetent. 
. The mass of the people get the notion that 
there is an element of ''buncombe" in 
ethics, as in politics. They are bewildered, 
it may be, by the example of this or the 
other rich man of notorious evil life, high 
in the councils of the church, or in society. 
The keen desire for, and admiration of, 
success, and a rather arbitrary ethical code, 

io8 



American Politics 



combine to make political chicanery easy, 
and organized opposition to it enormously 
difficult. Then, too, these politicians have 
qualities dear to the American heart : they 
are affable, vulgar, charitable toward the 
vices of others, and without assumption of 
virtue themselves. 

The record of the Irish during the last war 
was unsurpassed by that of any of the other 
foreign nationalities who took part in it. 
Two Irish lads, it was, who printed and pub- 
lished the first edition of Shakespeare pub- 
lished in this country, and the ancestors of 
two of the presidents of the United States 
came from the same village in the north 
of Ireland. 

Pretty much every other political party 
in this country has been split up and dis- 
integrated by internal dissensions at one 
time or another, but nobody has ever suc- 
ceeded in breaking the solid columns of the 
Irish Democrats. They hate England, but The solid 
it would be strange if they did not, and 
that sometimes interferes with the amicable 
relations that ought to exist between the 
two countries ; but, to be frank, that is be- 



Irish vote. 



109 



America and the Americans 

cause the American politicians are syco- 
phants to the Irish vote, and not through 
any fault of the Irish — and say what one 
will, their constant and unwavering loyalty 
to their own party, and their own people, 
is rather admirable than otherwise. 

The Americans are in a large majority 

everywhere, and if they choose to be ruled, 

Whose robbed, and misgoverned — as they claim 

fauttstt. ^^ i^g — i^y ^ minority of Irish voters, one 

can hardly bestow much sympathy upon 
them. 

It has been said that '^ Ce sont les mino- 
rites qui goiivernent le mo7ide, et c'' est poii7' 
cela que le monde a une histoire ; si la vraie 
viajorife gotivernail, il tie se pass er ait jamais 
rien'^ Certainly there is no lack of excit- 
ing political happenings under the rule of 
The Irish this Hibernian minority here, though they 

cotttribu- 1 • i ^ 1 ... ^ , 

tionto cause little rejoicing among the tax-pay- 

^o itics. -j^g sufferers. The making of notable 
history must be like the American habit 
of broiling live lobsters — more agreeable 
to him who enjoys it afterwards than to 
him who undergoes the operation at the 
time. 

no 



American Politics 



To the traveller who comes here to look 
on and to note impressions, this bullying of 
the natives by the vivacious Celts from the 
Emerald Isle is only another example of 
the national good-humor and indifference. 
**Let me make my pile, and you may do 
what you like with the municipal and the 
federal government ! ' ' seems to be the 
general sentiment. If the natives can make 
thousands, they will not bother to punish 
those who steal hundreds. Call it indiffer- 
ence, good -humor, recklessness, what you 
will, it is their own doing. They have no 
right to complain. They deserve to be is this in 
robbed and bullied and made uncomfort- lelnocracv? 
able. Perhaps some day they will arouse 
themselves from their scramble for wealth, 
and begin to think of governing themselves. 
Nowadays, this is merely an autocracy of 
those who will do the dirty machine-work, 
not a republic. 



Ill 




IX 

A Visit to Boston 

|HEN I made it known to my 
New York friends that I was 
soon to visit Boston, the ad- 
vice, suggestions, and com- 
ments that I received were very amusing. 
I was told that as soon as the train crossed 
Philistine the line into New England, I should hear 
Bo^onY very little English, as almost everybody 
spoke Latin or Greek; the theatres pre- 
sented only Greek plays, and nowadays 
Ibsen's comedies; no smoking and no 
swearing were permitted in the streets ; the 
ladies wore blue veils and eye-glasses ; the 
men spoke English of the most British de- 
scription, and wore their sheepskin de- 
grees from Harvard College instead of 
shirt-fronts ; little boys might be seen go- 
ing through the streets in procession, to 
present petitions to the Governor that 
school hours might be lengthened ; at the 

112 



A Visit to Boston 



principal clubs there were debates, three 
evenings in the week, on metaphysical 
subjects ; several of the churches had wom- 
en pastors, who wore '' bloomers" in the 
pulpit j at evening parties, after the dis- 
cussion of a paper read by a Harvard pro- 
fessor, Apolhnaris and iced -cream were 
served, and at very swell houses, ''club 
soda;" New York people only visited 
Boston when in deep mourning, since no 
entertainment there made such habiliments 
seem out of place. 

I was warned to express no surprise at 
the colossal procreative energies of the 
passengers on the Mayflower when the The May 
stupendous number of their descendants feTundUy. 
was made known to me; and I was ad- 
vised, that if I wished to be popular in 
Boston, nothing could serve my purpose 
better than to mistake Bunker Hill Monu- 
ment for a monolith, and to sigh over the 
social frivolity and the intellectual bar- 
renness of New York. 

I believe it to be true, that when any Truth and 
large number of people in any part of the ^''"""'' 
world acquire a reputation for eccentric- 

113 



America and the Americans 

ity, even though humor has exaggerated 
that reputation, there is hkely to be truth 
in the characterization. 

At a dinner in New York I had met a 
wealthy Bostonian and his wife. The day 
after my arrival in Boston I called upon 
them, as they had requested, and that same 
evening I was transferred, bag and baggage, 
to their very handsome residence. This 
was on a Thursday, and I am to be their 
guest until Monday. 

Now it may have been a coincidence — 
at the time I know that I was inclined to 
suspect that it was a hoax, suggested to my 
hostess by my friends in New York — but 
on Saturday morning I was invited by my 
hostess to go with her to attend a reading 
The from Browning. Until we were actually 

cuit"^^"^ in the hall, and the reading had begun, I 
still cherished the hope that it was all a 
joke. But it was no joke. For an hour 
and a half a young gentleman, very prettily 
dressed, and wearing a conspicuous num- 
ber of finger-rings, read selections from 
Browning to us. After the reading I was 
presented to a few of the ladies, and in a 
114 



A Fisit to Boston 



guarded way I took pains to find out if 
the reading was given for charity, or for 
the relief of anybody. No, these people 
all attended and paid a fairly high price 
for tickets, through sheer love of this form 
of entertainment. 

Some of the ladies present had knitting 
or embroidery with them, and worked 
steadily during the reading. The young 
gentleman was not a professor, was not a 
scholar of high rank, I was informed, but 
he had visited Mr. Browning in London, 
and was considered *'a very fine inter- '' a fine in- 
preter of Browning." I cannot pass any Brown/'ng'^ 
criticism on the young man, for my ac- 
quaintance with Browning's poetry is of 
the slightest, but I have neither added to 
my Browning library, nor to my acquaint- 
ance with his works, since that reading. 

That morning one lady asked me if I 
had written anything, or if I gave lect- 
ures; nobody ever suspected me of either lamsus- 
of these in New York, and I was a little literature. 
flattered by the inquiry, until my host in 
the evening told me that every foreigner 
was asked that question. 

"5 



America and the Americans 



I beg off. 



Boston's 
•weekly so- 
cial re- 
hearsal. 



On two Other occasions during my short 
stay I was invited to attend, once an 
evening lecture, and once another reading, 
this time from Thucydides, by a young 
college professor; but as I excused my- 
self on the plea of insufficient acquaintance 
with the English language to appreciate 
these forms of entertainment, I have no 
means of judging of their quality or in- 
terest. 

On Friday afternoon, however, I at- 
tended a concert, or a '' rehearsal," I be- 
lieve it was called, where again the au- 
dience was almost wholly composed of 
women. This, I was told, was a Boston in- 
stitution — a sort of musical afternoon-tea, 
where every Friday during the winter 
months, Boston inspects Boston through 
its eye-glasses, and, at the same time, makes 
attestation to itself of its love of culture 
manifesting itself in musical guise. Let us 
before all things be fair, and add, that 
though such a matter may lend itself to the 
exaggerations of humor on the part of the 
New York barbarians outside of the mod- 
ern Athens, it is undoubtedly the most care- 
ii6 



A Visit to Boston 



fully planned, and best, musical treat to be 
had in America. Boston rather prides 
itself on some of its peculiarities while 
others laugh, and with some show of reason. 

From the days of the Illuminati, of one 
hundred years ago, to the Ibsenism and 
neo-Buddhism of to-day, Boston has been 
the prey of all sorts of mental frenzies. Someo/ 
This is the home of the Transcendentalists /S."^ 
in philosophy, of the Deists in theology, of 
the '' Mugwumps " in politics, of Fourier- 
ism in sociology. 

It was not far from here that the "■ Brook 
Farm Movement ' ' attempted to put into 
practice the theories of our French social- 
ists of half a century ago. Here manual Socialism 
labor was to be leavened by the intellectual "1%%"!^' 
life, and everything in common resulted 
in nothing in particular, except debts. 

The abolition movement did not begin 
here, though it was here that a mob of 
respectable gentlemen led William Lloyd 
Garrison about the streets with a rope 
around his waist ; here, also, that the aris- 
tocratic part of the community ridiculed 
Governor Andrew for drilling and pre- 
117 



America and the Americans 



Literary 
laurels. 



Boston's 
reminis' 
cences. 



paring the State militia in anticipation of 
the War of the RebeUion. 

Boston also has the honor, a doubtful 
one, of having been the only community 
to insult Washington through the person 
of its chief magistrate, when Washington 
journeyed through the country after his 
election as President. 

Though this part of the world has some 
serious defects of its qualities, it is fair to 
say that its qualities, some of them, are of a 
very distinguished kind. The little knot 
of men who brought American literature 
into prominence were New England men — 
Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Whittier, 
Hawthorne, Thoreau, Holmes, Poe, and 
others of less note, were all native New 
Englanders, and all practically contem- 
poraries. It would be difficult to match 
such a literary crop in one season, as that, 
anywhere else in the world. 

The Revolution would have been im- 
possible, and the Rebellion next to im- 
possible, without New England's aid. It 
is well for the rest of America to remember 
these things, but it would be perhaps more 
ii8 



A Visit to Boston 



dignified of New Englanders not to do so 
much in the way of reminding others of 
their importance in the past. 

The decayed gentlewoman who is con- Anecdotage, 
tinually recaUing to us her past, produces 
the effect upon her less sympathetic lis- 
teners of making them to wish that decay 
were more rapid. 

New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and 
Kansas City are of this class of listeners 
when Boston begins to give the details of 
her former services. After a fortnight of 
Boston, Cambridge, Concord, and Plym- 
outh, one begins to understand the un- 
sympathetic, not to say weary, attitude of 
Boston's neighbors of less famous pedigree. 

Though the learning and culture are not 
so general, nor so conspicuous to the man 
in the street, as I was led to expect, there 
is no joke about the air of chastened su- 
periority which pervades the people. It is 
based on little enough now, for literature 
has flown to New York, and commerce has 
followed close after, while enterprise has 
gone West, and the political centre of grav- 
ity has moved elsewhere. 
119 



America atid the Americans 



Social pro- 
vinciality. 



Social vari- 
ety. 



Boston reached a certain level, socially 
and intellectually, before any of her rivals, 
but she seems to have stayed there ; hence 
to-day the foreigner is confronted with the 
population of a city, in the social and lit- 
erary short jacket and knickerbockers of 
a country town. The leaders of thought 
and action and fashion are no longer to 
be met with in Boston. The great houses 
socially are conducted by — in the three or 
four principal cases — men and women who 
are as grand fatherless as their friends in 
New York. The entertainments of the more 
ambitious social set lack brilliancy, because 
there is a dearth of variety in the guests. 

Poor Mr. McAllister's famous " Four 
Hundred" is cut down to fourscore here, 
and as the very essence of society is to be 
exclusive, exclusiveness here necessarily re- 
sults in entertainments of the ghastly char- 
acter of church sociables, only with more 
gilding. 

I attended four dinners, at which the 
smallest number of guests was twelve, the 
largest twenty-six or twenty-eight. At all 
four were my host and hostess ; and at all 



120 



A Visit to Boston 



four was one man, and at three two men, 
who seemed to be invited to every dinner 
in Boston. 

Not that it was not agreeable to meet 
these same people everywhere, but in what 
other capital which assumes such impor- 
tance is there such a dearth of social va- 
riety ? You really began to feel as though intimacies, 
you lived in the same house with these peo- 
ple, and to understand how it is that so 
many people in Boston call one another by 
their pettts no?ns. The constant reference 
to ^'Mrs. Jim," ''Mrs. Billy," ''Mrs. 
Dick;" and to "Bob," "Nat," "Tom," 
and "Jim," which at first seemed an af- 
fectation, ceased to be that, and I under- 
stood that it was the natural outcome of 
the charming familiarity of a country town. 

The conversation, too, was, much of the 
time, a conversation a clef, so far as I was 
concerned. The petits noms corresponded 
to the petites affaires, which interested 
them, and made up the stock pieces of 
their talk. They had all travelled, they all 
go frequently to New York, and when the 
conversation was directed to me, personally, 

121 



America and the Americans 

there was some effort at orientation, but 
when they talked to one another, it was al- 
ways in the pleasant and familiar jargon, 
and with the understood allusions, of a 
party of peasants at a picnic. 

Nor is this circumscribed and monoto- 
Doubtfui nous social life a characteristic noticed by 
"th^holfe foreigners alone. When I met people at 
critics. Cambridge, and elsewhere, who were not 
frequenters of this small circle, I found that 
even their own neighbors realized that Bos- 
ton lost, rather than gained, by the pro- 
vincialism of its chief entertainers. But 
this may have been jealousy on their part ; 
one can never be sure as to that, unless one 
lives for years in a community. My short 
visits to America enable me merely to be a 
chronicler of what I saw and heard, and 
not a critic of the Bostonians or of any 
other people of whom I write. 

It is not to be denied, however, that there 

A longitu- seems to be more heart-burning, morestriv- 

centetery]^ iug and pushing, morc juggling for social 

opportunity, here than elsewhere. One long 

and beautiful avenue is, from all accounts, 

a longitudinal cemetery of buried social 

122 



A Visit to Boston 



hopes, with fine residences standing as oc- 
cupied monuments. Here have flocked the 
famihes who, having made money, expected 
that by taking up their abodes along this 
avenue they would be that much nearer the 
social citadel ; but, alas ! for them, they 
stormed successfully this first line of breast- 
works only to find their progress indefi- 
nitely delayed there. 

Pelts and pellets, whiskey and patent 
medicines, pork and beef, reapers and oil- Boston's 
wells, may land those who benefit largely '^^'^^*"^' 
enough from them in the inner social circle 
at New York or Chicago, but not so here 
— ^so it is claimed, at least. 

In New York and Washington one hears 
certain residential districts spoken of as 
unfashionable, but it is done in a joking 
way, and in their social life there, though 
not to the same extent as in European cap- 
itals, one meets the men and women who Peopu i did 
have made their mark in art, literature, fi- 
nance, the Church, the State, or at the bar. 
But, in Boston, society is markedly lacking 
in this salt of variety. 

I was astonished to find that of the half 
123 



not meet. 



America and the Americans 



Social life 
here not 
" society " 
in the 
European 
sense. 



a dozen men in and about Boston whom I, 
a foreigner, had heard of and wanted to 
meet, not one was to be met with at such 
houses as I visited. Even the social stand- 
by, of whom at least one specimen is always 
present at a French or English or Italian, 
and often at a New York, dinner-table, the 
clergyman, was absent. 

The names of the President of Harvard 
College and of two of its professors, of one 
clergyman, one banker, and one railway 
magnate, in Boston, were familiar to me. 
But I was told that none of these appeared 
in Boston society. The president, profess- 
ors, and the clergyman because they did 
not care to do so, and the banker and the 
railway magnate because, for some occult 
reason, they were not asked. And yet if 
these six men were taken out of Boston, it 
would be with difficulty that they could be 
replaced. 

I met them all six during my visit, but 
it was because I went to them, and not 
because they appeared in the society to 
which I was introduced from Paris and 
New York. My host knew them all, but 



124 



A Visit to Boston 



though I mentioned several times my pur- 
pose to see them, it was very apparent that 
they, and their wives, were not convenient 
to entertain. He met them in one capac- 
ity or another, some of them frequently, 
but he and his wife did not meet them and 
their wives. This all seemed to me very 
stupid, but I suppose that is because I am 
stupid, for ''stupid" is the last word that 
a Bostonian ever applies to himself or to 
the institutions he upholds. 



125 



church. 




X 

Class Distinctions 

I HEN one visits a community 
which claims to have given 
particular attention to the 
rocking of the cradle of Lib- 
erty, one expects to find in that commun- 
ity signs of the vigor of the child Liberty 
at the advanced age of one hundred years. 
It is startling to find then, that, of all 
places, the churches are the very citadels 
of class distinctions. 

After I had attended to my own devo- 
tions early in the morning, I was taken 
Boston at to one of the oldest churches in Boston. 
Here the pews are all owned, actually 
owned, by the worshippers, who can dis- 
pose of them to their heirs like any other 
property. As this congregation assembled, 
the different families marched in procession 
to their seats — or pews, as they are called 
126 



Class Distinctions 



cal exclu' 
stveness. 



here — walked in, and shut and locked the 
doors behind them. 

This is the high- water mark of exclusive- Ecciesiasti- 
ness, so far as my experience of the world 
goes. No club, no theatre, no society, no 
office, is more completely in the hands of 
its possessors. You can be elected even 
to the French Academy if you merit it ; 
even the President of the United States 
must open his official residence to the 
people from time to time, and shake hands 
with whosoever comes, but in these houses 
of God in Boston, membership may con- 
tinue a family affair, like the throne of 
England or Russia. When this aristocratic 
ecclesiastical arrangement was explained to 
me, my astonishment was unbounded, but 
none of my informants seemed to share 
my astonishment. 

The vulgarity and the blasphemous com- 
mercial aspect of the whole thing seemed 
not to appear to them. Why there 
should not be '^ job -lots," '< bargains," 
'' booms," and '' corners " in the matter of 
*^ salvation," as in other affairs, they evi- 
dently do not understand. At the large 
127 



America and the Americans 

church I attended in the afternoon, the 
pews were, I was told, rented in much the 
same fashion, though there were no Httle 
doors to lock, as in the first church I at- 
tended. 

The clergymen who preside over these 
institutions are paid a regular salary, and 
dismissed at the option of the pew-owners 
Strange ^o- and pcw-rentcrs. They have, of course, no 
"lergy^. ^ morc actual freedom than a butler or a 
coachman. If they do not preach what is 
wanted, or if they do not conduct them- 
selves, socially and politically, to the taste 
of their masters, they can be summarily 
dismissed at a few months' notice. 

I asked how it was that priests who as- 
sume the power to pronounce absolution 
and forgiveness are at the same time prac- 
tically without power even to retain their 
Theshep- placcs, or to pronouncc their flock right or 
tJiefotds. wrong, since the sheep have only to get to- 
gether and vote to eject the shepherd from 
the fold when it pleases them so to do. 

It was admitted that this was apparently 
a strange anomaly, but that, as a matter of 
fact, there is seldom any difficulty in re- 
128 



Class Distinctions 



placing a shepherd. On the contrary, many 
shepherds apply for every vacant fold, and 
often there are regular political caucuses, 
and much manoeuvring by the friends of 
this shepherd, or that, to get him elected. 
Shepherds of other folds, smaller or less 
lucrative, often write, and ask to be allowed 
to present themselves for the suffrage of a 
larger or wealthier fold which is known to 
be vacant. 

So universal is this club - like manage- 
ment and exclusiveness of the churches, 
that the audiences you see in them are as 
fashionably dressed as the audience at a 
first-rate theatre. No poor people ever Thepoov 
think of attending them, any more than church. 
they think of entering a fashionable club. 

Often these wealthy ecclesiastical clubs 
have ''chapels" or "missions" in other 
parts of the city, to which the poor are 
supposed to go, but to which, as a rule, the 
self-respecting poor — and rightly so — will 
not go. Those who do go are the syco- 
phants, who go in order to fawn upon, and 
get money and clothes and fuel from, the 
representatives of the rich families who 
129 



America and the Americans 



Clerical 
comment. 



The 

churches 
and social 
prestige. 



go there to teach, or to assist at the ser- 
vices. 

Said my clerical friend to me : " Those 
chapels and missions of the rich city 
churches are hot-beds of hypocrisy, jeal- 
ousy, and sycophancy. I would not go to 
one if I were a poor man, and I have little 
respect for the poor man who does." 

' ' Where do the poor go, and who looks 
after them, then?" I inquired. ''Your 
people and the Salvation Army look after 
them spiritually, so far as it is done at all — 
and it is to be remembered in this con- 
nection that fifty-six per cent, of the total 
white population of America is not iden- 
tified with any church, and that thirty- 
six per cent, of these belong to the poorer 
class — and we Protestants contribute large- 
ly toward their material support. Why, 
many of these churches," he continued, 
''are just as easily defined socially as the 
clubs. This set of people go to one, that 
set go to another, and so on ; and people get 
into them, and go to them, very often for 
the chance of the social recognition that 
may follow from such attendance." 



130 



Class Distinctions 



With all that, I, as a foreigner, have 
nothing to do. It is another of the many 
problems that the Americans have to solve 
for themselves. The subject interests me 
only as another phase of the unrepublican Pas mon 
state of affairs here. It interests me also, '^■"'^^^^ 
as showing how here again the theory re- 
sults in the most deplorable practice, and 
yet the people themselves, with their cus- 
tomai;y good-humored indifference, pass it 
by and neglect it. 

Advertisements of summer villas, of 
yachts, and of second-hand carriages ap- 
pear side by side with the advertisements 
of ** centrally located" pews to rent in this 
or that fashionable church. One man was 
pointed out to me, in Boston, who sub-let 
pews in three different churches, and made Buih and 
*' a good thing out of all of them," as my church. 
friend expressed it. One can fancy it to be 
quite in keeping with the American genius 
for trading, to pick up a job-lot of pews 
in a church, then to ''boom" the church, 
and sub-let the pews at an advance. 

I am not aware that there are actually 
brokers who devote themselves exclusively 

131 



America and the Americans 

to this business, but there is no reason on 
the face of things as here conducted why- 
there should not be. At any rate, you 
often hear clergymen spoken of as having 
stock-mar- ' ' great drawing power, ' ' meaning that they 
^aminhte'^/. attract large audiences, who buy or rent 
pews, and thus keep the church exchequer 
full. Twice in the newspapers I have seen 
notices of the dismissal of clergymen be- 
cause they could not '' fill " their churches, 
and thus meet expenses. 

When I think of the two priests in my 
own parish, and of the pittance that they 
receive, and of the small '' drawing power " 
My ''Mon- they possess, and yet of the boundless good 
^Curi:'^ they do, and the endless services they ren- 
der our small community, I wonder how 
long either one of them would consent to 
remain in a parish where his services were 
measured by the receipts at the door, as 
though he were a leading performer in a 
theatrical troupe. This system must be 
galling to the devoted clergy, as it certainly 
is productive of the most cynical worldli- 
ness in those who are callous or indifferent. 
Here again the good-humored laisser- 
132 



Class Distinctions 



aller policy of the Americans reveals itself. 
The clerical mountebanks are ridiculed, clerical 
sneered at, and, in some quarters, openly I'ank!!' 
despised, and yet crowds go to hear them 
and to laugh at tTieir jokes ; they go to 
pray, and remain to scoff. They are ap- 
plauded but not trusted, as in the case of 
some of the American publicists. In fact, 
if a man is widely popular in America, if 
he be much applauded, and have many 
followers and many listeners, you may set 
him down, in two out of four cases, as be- 
ing a man whom the people secretly dis- 
trust. 

This is a peculiar state of affairs, but it 
is borne out by the fact that it is becoming 
more and more difficult to nominate for 
election to the presidency of the United The case 0/ 
States a really first-class man. Since the 2«?r"' 
first six presidents, with the one very nota- 
ble exception of Abraham Lincoln — and 
even in his case he was not known to the 
people when they elected him — there has 
not been elected to the office of chief mag- 
istrate a single individual of first-rate pow- 
ers, while some who have filled the office 



133 



America and the Americans 



Public and 

private 

schools. 



Growing 
gulf be- 
tween rich 
andpoor. 



have been, as in the case of Taylor, Bu- 
chanan, Pierce, Polk, Hayes, and the first 
Harrison, men of very second-rate abilities 
indeed. Some of these presidents after 
election however have proved themselves 
to be unexpectedly capable. 

Another very palpable reason for the 
growing divergence of classes in this coun- 
try is the rapidly growing popularity of 
the private, as distinct from the public, 
schools. A century, or even half a century, 
ago the boys of any community, rich and 
poor alike, went to school and to college 
together, and knew one another intimately 
all through their boyhood and youth. 

There was less jealousy and less suspic- 
ion between classes then, because the boys 
were educated together, and also because 
there were not then, as now, such vast dif- 
ferences of wealth between the rich and 
the poor. All the people lived more 
nearly on the same level. In the days of 
Washington, the two Adamses, and Jeffer- 
son, the youths of the land were educated 
along the same lines, and in the same 
schools. 



134 



Class Distinctions 



schools. 



To-day all that is changed. The public 
schools in the large cities are attended by 
the children of the poor almost exclusively, 
while the children of the well-to-do are 
sent to private schools^some of them on Theprivate 
the plan of the great English public schools 
— where the fees and expenses for one boy's 
schooling for a year range from 2,500 to 
5,000 francs. 

These schools are quite out of reach of 
even people with moderate incomes. This 
is a severe blow at the theory of popular 
education, and strikes also at the very heart 
of the republican theory, that all should 
profit by the same educational opportuni- 
ties. Instead of this, there is rapidly grow- 
ing an aristocracy of education. This aris- 
tocracy of the private schools distrusts the 
democracy of the public schools, and the 
democracy of the public schools is suspi- 
cious, and often jealous, of the aristocracy 
of the private schools. They do not meet, 
they do not know one another, they have 
little in common with one another, and 
they vote against one another. 

An educated, well-trained, and honest 

135 



America and the Americans 

gentleman, who would be the very best ser- 
vant of the poor, because he knows what 
they do not know, and because he would 
neither rob them nor wilfully deceive 
them, is often cut off from political service 
because those who ought to be his constitu- 
ents do not know him, and distrust him 
mainly because he is not one of them. 

It is perhaps true that in France, Eng- 
land, and Germany the rich and the poor 
are not educated together — much less 
so in France and Germany than in Eng- 
ciassdis- land — but the various classes are not so 
^EuropT. "' unacquainted with one another, not on 
such self-conscious and restrained terms 
with one another as they are here. They 
meet oftener, strange to say, on a common 
basis, of every man on his individual merit, 
without regard to rank, position, or fortune, 
than here. 
Germany. In Germany they are educated together, 
because there the public schools and uni- 
versities, which are open to all, and very 
cheap, are better than any private educa- 
tional institutions. 

The same is true of France, and in both 

136 



Class Distinctions 



France and Germany they serve side by France, 
side in the army. 

In England they know one another in 
the army and navy, and they meet one an- 
other continually in the hunting- field, at 
cricket and foot-ball, and in the country, 
and out-of-door life, lived by so many Eng- England. 
lish people. The English laborer touches 
his hat to the village squire, but he is, as a 
matter of fact, on far friendlier, and even 
more intimate, terms with him than is the 
American millionnaire with any man, or 
men, of similar position in his neighbor- 
hood. 

In France, especially, but in England 
and Italy also, your servants are your 
friends, sometimes very dear friends; but 
there is none of that here, just where one 
might expect it. They do not take care 
of one another here, in the case of masters 
and servants, as I delight to take care of Servants 
old Francois at home, and he delights to ft^„%^'''^ 
take care of me, only in different capacities ; 
they do not even care for one another; 
they simply hire and are hired. 

In Europe there is a traditional feeling 

137 



America and the Americans 

of responsibility on the part of the power- 
ful for the weak, of the rich for the poor. 
The squire's house is often the hospital, 
the bank, and the asylum for his poorer 
neighbors. On the other hand, the 
American millionnaire — with exceptions, 
notable exceptions indeed — is the most 
heedlessly irresponsible magnate that the 
world has seen since the days of feudalism. 
The enormous establishments maintained 
by French, English, and Austrian men of 
wealth are laughed at here, but often 
Responsi- euough they represent the responsibility 
wealth. those men feel to their neighborhood and 
their neighbors, and are far more demo- 
cratic than the wasteful luxury of Amer- 
ica's rich men and women, who recognize 
no such responsibility to any neighborhood 
or to any neighbors. 

One comes to feel here that no art is 
more difficult than the art of being rich. 
This country needs a number of univer- 
sities devoted solely to such instruction. 
*' Beggars mounted run their horse to 
death." It is the rich as well as the poor 
who are making this republic a land of 

138 



Class Distinctions 



class distinctions, a land of privileges, a 
land of social and political jealousies. 
Minor and official distinctions of class, of 
creed, of service, of rank, are largely ob- 
literated, it is true, but nowhere in the Heedless 
world is the line so rudely drawn between vioutpoor.' 
the rich and the poor, between the master 
and the menial, between the workers who 
do not use their hands and the laborers 
who do, as here. 

In Europe there is great diversity of 
striving ; men are working for different 
ends; many men know when they have 
enough, and drop out of the race, to live 
contentedly on what they have. 

But not so in America. The word 
*' enough" is the lonehest, and the least Wealth the 
often employed, word in the American ard. 
vocabulary. There is no diversity of striv- 
ing; all are striving for money, money, 
money. This makes the race fast and fu- 
rious, and competition and rivalry bitter, 
and not always honorable. Money here 
is tyrant, as it is tyrant nowhere else. 
Men will do for money here what men 
will do for money nowhere else. 

139 



America and the Americans 



The scram- 
ble for 
dollars. 



Climatic 
intoxica- 
tion. 



In Europe men are divided into many 
classes, and these different classes have 
their particular rivalries and competitions. 
Here all men are in the one colossal class 
of the money-makers, all fighting one an- 
other, all fearful of one another, and all rec- 
ognizing but one class distinction — that 
between those who have and those who 
have not. 

It cannot surely be long before this 
state of things must crystallize into politi- 
cal parties. Heretofore men have divided 
along political lines, soon they will divide 
along social lines ; and then, if I mistake 
not, the national barometer will begin go- 
ing down toward a point marked The 
Deluge. 

I find myself surprised at myself in mak- 
ing these observations. The climate here 
is intoxicating, the people are optimistic, 
the material wealth is enormous — the act- 
ual valuation of all real and personal prop- 
erty in the United States is 325,185,- 
455,985 of francs — and yet I cannot put 
away from me the impression that another, 
and an even more ferocious, struggle, be- 
140 



Class Distinctions 



tween those who have and those who have 
not, looms not far off upon the horizon. 

I can see the mortgage-burdened West 
and Southwest maddened by demagogues 
demanding some prosperity-killing, politi- 
cal or economic, or financial, change. 

I can see frightened Eastern capitalists Frightened 
sending money to Canada, to England, and ^^^'^'^ "^^" 
to Germany for safe-keeping. 

I can see holders of American securities 
in Europe literally dumping them back 
upon the market here. 

I can see the social jealousies, that the 
Americans either will not, or cannot, see, 
exchanging surly looks for rifles, and frowns 
for gunpowder ; and then I can see these 
seventy millions in such a turbulent death- 
struggle as would awe the world, even the 
world which still hears the re-echoing 
shrieks and groans and laughter of our own 
Revolution. Thank God, you and I will 
not be there to see ! Please God, it may 
be a false vision and I a mistaken prophet ! a vision. 
But unless the people here who know, and 
have, awaken to some sort of sense of re- 
sponsibility, and the better class of news- 



141 



America and the Americans 

papers cease to tamper with the dynamite 
of class prejudice, trouble is sure to come. 
It is true that thus far the sturdy good 
Underlying: seusc which Underlies the indifference and 
recklessness of these people has always come 
to the front in the hour of danger, and 
triumphed over all obstacles and all at- 
tacks. But it is well to notice that each 
time the attack is more furious than before, 
the anarchism more outspoken, and the 
spread of discontent covers a wider area. 
So long as the social questions can be en- 
tangled with matters concerning the cur- 
rency and the tariff, the rival camps are 
themselves split into parties, but if the 
battle is ever fairly engaged between the 
The would- would - haves and the have - gots, there 
thThavl- promises to be a reign of terror for awhile. 
After each election, people forget how 
frightened they were before it. It were 
well if they could remember their fright 
for some time after as well as before ! 



gots. 



142 




XI 



Concord, Plymouth, and Cam- 
bridge 

jY visits to Concord and Plym- 
outh were, I must confess, dis- 
appointments. At Concord the 
houses where certain great men 
have lived, the streets through which they 
were wont to walk, and in the neighborhood 
certain spots consecrated to the first out- 
breaks of the War of the Revolution, are 
shown to you. 

To the foreigner, whose imagination is First im- 
not fired by these recollections, the place ^concard. 
is but a barren country village. The names 
of Emerson and Thoreau were more or 
less familiar, but some of the other names, 
that of a man named Alcott, for example, 
who, I was told, was a great philosopher, 
were names I had never seen and never 
heard. 

143 



America and the Americans 

American The insularity of Americans is very much 
insuarty. ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ occasions. They are 

lacking in that culture which consists in 
fine discriminations. Open and undis- 
guised surprise was expressed at Concord 
that I had never heard of Alcott. But 
when I came to inquire what he had writ- 
ten, it turned out that he had written noth- 
ing ; and yet the foreigner was supposed 
to know the distinguishing features of this 
literary foundling of a little town in 
Massachusetts. It reminds one of a child 
who says to the total stranger : ** Why, my 
name's Jeanne; don't you know me? " 

After the rather pompous young cler- 
gyman who accompanied us on our tour 
about Concord had retailed to me the 
literary and political gossip of the place, 
as though each minute fragment were a 
commonplace of European discussion, I 
could not refrain from a little subdued im- 
pertinence. When he asked me, therefore, 
what Americans were best known abroad — 
they always say ' ' abroad ' ' here in refer- 
ring to Europe, as though we were anchored 
off their coast somewhere — I told him that 

144 



Concord, Plymouth, and Cambridge 
the two names I had heard most often were Aicott 

versus John 

those of Mark Twain and John L. Sullivan, l, SuUivan 

There is a grain of truth in this state- 
ment, though, no doubt, this admission on 
my part left my reputation in Concord torn 
to tatters. But even though Emerson was 
foolish enough to say that Aicott had the 
finest mind since Plato, I never heard of 
him, and thousands of Frenchmen, Ger- 
mans, and Englishmen of undoubted claims 
to literary eminence have never heard of 
him ; and though Concord bemoan our in- 
tellectual limitations, I am bound to make 
the confession. 

The only things that I remember dis- 
tinctly about Concord are this young cleri- 
cal prig and a really fine statue by a sculptor 
named French. To say that I remember 
them for entirely different reasons, I owe it 
to the sculptor to admit at once. 

To Plymouth I went, accompanied by a 
genial and cultivated acquaintance, and it a guide to 

r , , . , , T^i 1 Plymouth. 

is due to him, rather than to Plymouth per- 
haps, that I owe my enjoyment of the jour- 
ney. He was a scholar, a man of the world, 
and devoted to his own particular subject. 

145 



America and the Americans 

He had travelled, and had met men all 
over Europe, and so made no attempt to 
assume that my education had been neg- 
lected because I was unfamiliar with the 
insular distinctions of a provincial com- 
munity. 

But even at Plymouth the kindly gen- 
tleman, who went about with us, devoted 
a good share of the day to an explanation, 
for my benefit, of the difference between 
Pilgrims, the Pilgrims and the Puritans. He seemed 
an7Jian- to think that most of the planetary disturb- 
^*^' ances and many of the European complica- 

tions of the day might be allayed if the 
difference between the Pilgrims and the 
Puritans were kept in mind. 

This absorbing interest in the affairs of 
the moment, and the affairs of one's own 
community, is an American trait. Per- 
haps it is due to their isolation from the 
larger concerns of the world ; but what- 
ever the cause, it is looked upon by most 
Americans as unpatriotic to see anything 
good outside of America. 

No criticism — except political criticism 
— ^is tolerated, even in the newspapers. It 
146 



Concord, Plymouth, and Cambridge 

is a fine quality in a man to stand by his 
friends, whether they are right or wrong, 
once they are in trouble ; it is a fine thing 
in the people of a nation to stand by their 
flag, once that flag is unfurled in battle ; 
but surely the frank criticism of one's 
friends and of one's country in their pros- 
perity is not treason. 

But these people are personally and, as 
a nation, fearfully sensitive. Not to shout American 
the most absurd patriotic bombast all the S! ' 
time is, -for a politician, political suicide ; 
and not to do much the same thing in the 
case of the private individual, is to earn 
the reputation of being finical. This ten- 
dency protects each community, and the 
nation at large, in a narrow-mindedness 
only equalled in Turkey and China. 

I was told that there are only twenty- 
four towns in all Massachusetts without a 
free public library, and no children to whom 
are not ofl'ered the very best opportunities 
for free schooling. Here, as in so many 
other departments of life in America, the 
theory is excellent, but the results in prac- 
tice are by no means what this and other 

147 



America and the Americans 



nostrums. 



Democratic democratic nostrums promised. There are 
jails, and criminals, and insane asylums, 
drunkards, and tenement-houses, and polit- 
ical jobbery in Massachusetts, just as there 
are in France, in England, and Italy, and, 
no doubt, in much the same proportion to 
the inhabitants. 

As for the country towns, I have never 
seen anywhere, out of Italy, such numbers 
of apparently unoccupied young men and 
boys. At every railway-station you see 
them, at the street-corners you see them, 
and, unless they are Transcendental philos- 
ophers on the browse for epigrams, as my 
slim young Concord clergyman would have 
me believe, they probably get into mis- 
chief just as do other idlers in countries 
where there are fewer public libraries and 
fewer free schools. 

Travelled Americans have often told me 
how they have been amazed in France, in 
England, and in Germany, to find how 
little the people of the interior towns and 
villages know of the great world outside 
them. But here this indifference takes an- 
other and worse form. 



Transcend- 
ental loaf' 
ers. 



148 



Concord, Plymouth, ami Cambridge 



At Concord and Plymouth and other 
towns, not excepting Boston even, there 
is a complete self-satisfaction with the very- 
little they do know, and a calm assumption Seif-suffi- 

• • r 1 ciency. 

that they are the ideal communities ot the 
world, toward which the benighted com- 
munities of the rest of the world are striv- 
ing, which, if it were not so sad, would 
be highly ridiculous. 

Here is a great State with only twenty- 
four villages which lack free libraries, and 
in it the largest university in the nation, 
and for the last twenty-five years not a 
book has been written there which has intellectual 

sterility. 

been universally welcomed, as were the 
writings of Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, 
and Whittier. Indeed, since the death of 
Webster, Sumner, and Andrew, there has 
not been produced by this community a 
great man, unless, perhaps, it be the pres- 
ent bishop of the State.* 

It is often said in America that their 
great advantage over the rest of the world 
lies in the fact that no traditions and no 

* This was written before the death of the late 
Bishop Brooks. — Ed. 

149 



America and the Americans 

prejudices stop the way to progress. On 
the other hand, what is always forgotten 
is the fact of their hide-bound attachment 
to their own theories, no matter what the 
outcome may be in practice. 
Theory and The theory of universal education pre- 
scribed by law is a good theory, but in 
practice it has neither produced an excep- 
tional number of scholars, nor has it de- 
creased the number of dependents and de- 
linquents, or cleansed politics. The theory 
of checks for the transfer of luggage is a 
good theory and sounds very convenient ; 
in practice it delays the arrival of luggage, 
causes the traveller to miss his connections, 
and in the end is ruinously expensive. The 
theory of many mechanical contrivances 
for personal intercourse, such as the type- 
writer, the microphone, short-hand, and the 
telephone is a good theory ; but in practice 
it fails notably to compete with the per- 
sonal service of Europe. 
The theory The theory of the political equality of 
%taiity^ every man is a good theory, and it has, be 
it said in its favor, done away with a cer- 
tain servility of the lower to the upper 



Concord, Plymouth, and Cambridge 

classes ; but in practice it has ostracized 
good manners and obedience in all classes, 
and put the management of New York, 
Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities in 
the hands of unprincipled and indifferent 
money-grabbers. The theory of one man 
—one vote— sounds well, but, strange to 
say, in every presidential election no such 
thing exists even. In each State every 
voter throws his ballot not for his one can- 
didate, but for the whole number of elec- 
tors allotted to his State. Hence each Tke.aiue 
voter m New York State votes for thirty- '■^'''"'"• 
six votes for President, while in the smaller 
States, of course, the voter's vote is of less 
value. 

It is true that the people are not blind- 
ed by prejudice, but they are drunk with 
theories which their lack of a certain inter- 
national experience renders them incapable 
of criticising. I am happy to say that the 
above was written before my visit to Har- 
vard College. For once there, I was told 
that the rest of the country looks upon 
Harvard College as a hot-bed of political 
toryism. But that again seems to me to be 

151 



America and the Americans 

due to another theory, with its attendant 
bad practice. 

The theory of this land is free speech 
and free thought, but the practice is the 
muzzHng of both. There are men here, 
and elsewhere, who, because they are not 
pohtical hirelings, and because they write 
and speak what they believe, without ref- 
erence to whether it will or will not ac- 
crue to their personal popularity, by this 
very putting into practice of the national 
theory, are harshly Criticised, ridiculed, 
and stormed at, by almost every news- 
paper in the country. 

When a man's ancestors, some of them, 
have died for free thought and free speech, 
he has a warm place in his heart for any in- 
stitution which insists upon this privilege, 
whether he agrees altogether with what is 
thought, and said sometimes, or not. 

I saw the usual sights here. In the beau- 
Memories tiful hall built to commemorate the men 
who fell in battle in 1861-65, I saw six or 
seven hundred of the students dining to- 
gether, waited upon by the negroes, whom 
their fellows fought to free from slavery. 

152 



o/ihe war. 



Concord, Plymouth, and Cambridge 

I attended a lecture on the Fine Arts, 
and another on English, and found the lat- 
ter particularly interesting from the novel 
way in which the subject was handled. 

I got up early one morning and went to 
the chapel for morning prayers. Until re- 
cently the attendance on morning prayers Prayers 

, , , , . . . , and athUU 

has been obligatory, now it is voluntary, ics. 
The attendance was very small, and most 
of those present were, I was informed, men 
in training for the various athletic contests, 
who are obliged by their regimen to get 
up early. With the usual American inge- 
nuity, ''prayers" are made use of to en- 
force this law of athletics, for thus it can be 
seen easily by the trainers and captains of 
*' teams " and '' crews," that their men are 
out of bed when they should be. 

There is one official chaplain to the uni- 
versity, but clergymen of different creeds 
take charge of the religious work in turn, 
and when one or another of these is in 
charge, I was told that more of the students 
attend the services. 

Some of the newer buildings are costly 
and handsome, but the older buildings, in 

153 



America and the Americans 



Meagre en- 
tertaining. 



Academic 

cotnpari- 

sons. 



what is called "the college yard," cannot 
bear comparison with the buildings of the 
different colleges of the f^nglish universities. 

The entertaining here is on a modest 
scale, and only here and there a professor 
who has, or whose wife has, money, is en- 
abled to entertain to any continued extent. 
The salaries paid are larger than in French 
or German universities, but nothing like as 
large as those received by the heads of col- 
leges in England. 

The president is a man of admirable 
presence and distinguished speech, who en- 
joys that paradoxical, but most genuine, 
popularity — the popularity of the unpopular 
man. People believe in him without lik- 
ing him ; while, unless my impressions are 
wrong, the majority of America's popu- 
lar idols are men whom the people applaud 
without trusting them. 

I met some of the students, and if I may 
permit myself a broad, and, I must admit 
also, a hasty, generalization, I should say 
that there are fewer men here with the 
wide culture of the universities of Europe, 
but perhaps more who have devoted them^ 



154 



Concord, Plymouth, and Cambridge 



selves to specialties, particularly the spe- 
cialties of science. 

One might fancy that there would be a 
good deal of intercourse between the uni- 
versity men, both professors and under- Cambridge 
graduates, and the people of Boston, but '''''^ ^''''''' 
I am told there is comparatively little. 
Many Boston men are graduates of the col- 
lege, and many have sons there, but either 
on account of the provincialism of Boston 
society as a whole, or through lack of so- 
cial enterprise on both sides, the good that 
might be expected to result from a large 
university and a large city, side by side, is 
not present. 

Harvard, recruiting its students from all 
over America, is not up to Boston socially ; 
and Boston, recruiting its fashionable peo- 
ple, year by year, from the ranks of the 
newly rich, is not up to Harvard intellect- 
ually. Whatever the reason, the fact re- 
mains the same, and is another indication 
of the narrowness of much of the social and 
intellectual life here. 



155 




XII 

American English 

}0 stranger may visit Boston 
without discovering that there 
is a timid consciousness on the 
part of Bostonians that it is a 
profitable thing to hear Enghsh as spoken 
Boston in Boston. The broad *' a " is as much a 

English. product of Boston, so they think there, as 
codfish-balls or baked beans. A spinster 
of uncertain years is no more titteringly 
offended when you underestimate her years 
than is Boston when you allude to the pro- 
nunciation of the English language there. 
My own acquaintance with English is too 
slight to permit of my posing as a fair critic 
on this question. Still, even I could not 
fail to note differences in the different parts 
of the States that I had the honor to visit. 
The soft, guttural speech of the South- 
erner, the sharp, metallic nasality of the 
West, the dodging of the letter <' r " in 

156 



American Emlish 



" girl "and " bird " and " shirt," and the 
like, in New York, all these were soon fa- 
miliar to me. The Bostonian, however, 
assumes that he speaks like an Englishman. 
Fortunately, for him, he does not ; unfortu- 
nately for him, in many cases he tries to 
do so. 

Sometimes the conquered are the con- 
querors. In Boston the Bunker Hill Monu- 
ment commemorates a victory, but the 
neo-Briticism of their speech proves that 
here again the conquerors made endur- 
ing conquests. 

'' Highfalutin" and ''gerrymander," American- 
and ''buncombe" and "variety show" 
(for music-hall entertainment), "notion 
counter," " gone where the woodbine twin- 
eth " (meaning up the spout), " busted " 
(meaning bankrupt), "spread-eagleism," 
" bull-doze," " catch on," " put-up job," 
" too previous," political "pull," " bump- 
tious," "give us a rest," and many other 
words and phrases, are, if not academic, 
still capital additions to the vocabulary of 
everyday conversation. 

The stranger greets these brand-new lin- 

157 



isms. 



America and the Americans 

gual visitors with effusive delight. The 
stranger, too, rather admires the grand- 
fatherless millionnaires, and views with 
pleasure their doughty sons and daughters 
clambering up the social ladder. The 
American, strange to say, is apparently the 
last to appreciate what are the genuine 
novelties and the real charms of his own 
civilization. He is all too often ashamed 
of the wrong things, like the college-edu- 
cated son of a man who, without any breed- 
ing, has made his ^* pile." 

If there be a quality for which '' bun- 
combe " or '' highfalutin " or ''spread- 
eagleism " supplies the exact interpretation 
— and there is — then these words ought to 
be welcome. If there is a stage of civili- 
zation in a new country where sheer per- 
sonal prowess hews its way to success with- 
out any of the advantages of university 
training, then the exponent of that ought 
to be welcomed, and not apologized for. 
Assumed There is a twittering self-consciousness 

conji ence. ^^^^ ^.j^g Americans however — except on 

the Fourth of July — which makes them un- 
certain as to what is good form and what 

158 



American English 



is bad form, in both their speech and their 
manners. One would find himself quite at 
fault, should he accept the satisfied and self- 
glorifying statements of the newspapers and 
the political orators about '' the greatest 
country on earth," '' God's own country," 
' ' we can lick creation , " '' a hundred years 
of prosperity unequalled in the aeons of all 
the planets," as being the serious estimate 
of themselves, held by most Americans. 
All that is merely the self-deceptive boast- 
ing of a people who are in reality diffident 
about many of their institutions, about their 
manners, and even about their speech. 

'' Consuetudo certissima loquendi magis- Noconsen- 
tra ' ' writes Quintilian, and what the Ameri- 7om%unu 
cans lack, above all things, are precedents 
and experience. This dearth of fixed stand- 
ards in manners and speech, and of any class 
acknowledged to be worthy leaders in such 
matters, leaves each community and every 
man to shift for himself. This ought "to 
produce a picturesque variety of manners 
and of speech which would be both inter- 
esting to, and respected by, the foreign visi- 
tor. As a matter of fact, however, the 

159 



America and the Americans 

Americans '' hanker " (first-rate word this) 
after just those precedents, just those cere- 
monious formahties, for which they have no 
equivalents. 

True, this is more apparent in the East 
than in the West and South, but in my 
two visits, with an interval between of some 
years, I can see that their self-sufficiency is 
lessening, and that their striving to adopt 
the manners, customs, clothes, ceremonies, 
and formalities of what the newspapers and 
the ' ' buncombe ' ' orators are pleased to 
call '^ the effete monarchies of Europe," 
is spreading ever farther into the interior. 

It is only in the larger cities that the 
newspapers can be depended upon for good 
English, nor can much confidence be 
placed in them even, as authorities. The 
mass of people who read their local newspa- 
pers are not improved in their writing or 
speaking of English, thereby. 
Journalism I believc I am right in stating that it is 
only since the late war that newspapers 
here have been profitable enough to em- 
ploy first-rate men. In France, and in 
England, the very best men from Jules 

1 60 



compared. 



American English 



Simon to Zola, and from Lord Salisbury- 
down, have been proud to enroll themselves 
as journalists. It is only within the last 
thirty years here, that the newspapers have 
improved in tone sufficiently to make it 
at all usual for the better class of educated 
men to be connected with them in any 
capacity. 

It was my pleasure, and my profit, some Two jour- 
years ago to meet Mr. George William 
Curtis, and since that time I have met Mr. 
Charles Dana. The former was a very un- 
usual type of gentleman, and a man of deli- 
cate humor, refined speech, and unbending 
integrity ; while the latter is a scholar in 
many different fields, and an amateur in 
everything. Such men as these, and there 
are doubtless many others, mark, in the 
field of journalism, the sharp contrast, 
which seems to me, the more I travel here, 
to be the sahent feature of the civilization. 

You no sooner make up your mind at 
the tumble-down wharf to which your 
steamer is tied, that you have landed at a 
frontier town, than you marvel at the fin- 
ished luxury of your rooms at the hotel. 
i6i 



contrasts 
again, 



America and the Americans 

You are about to make a generalization 
from the beefsteak and ice-cream dinner 
Sharp of your neighbor in the hotel restaurant, 

when you dine off gold, and drink from 
crystal, at the house of your friend's 
friend ; you prepare to damn the news- 
papers after reading the lust, lechery, and 
larceny headed columns of one or another 
journal, when you are surprised into hesi- 
tation by a witty half column in the Sun 
or a dignified discussion in the Tribune ^ 
though even the best edited of them can- 
not refrain from calling names, and apply- 
ing vulgar epithets, in true street-arab 
fashion. 

No country in the world that I have 
visited tempts you so often to say '' all 
men are liars," or something worse, and 
brings you up so often with a round turn, 
to tempt you into extravagant praise. 

Then, too, in this matter of the use of 
English, either spoken or printed, a French- 
man hesitates to make categorical state- 
ments. It was, alas ! one of my own coun- 
trymen who, translating a French culinary 
recipe into English, wrote : '' The rabbit 
162 



American English 



humor. 



wants to be skinned alive, the hare prefers 
to wait." 

The peculiar quality of American hu- 
mor is apt to land a foreigner in many pit- 
falls. So much of the newspaper writing 
and of the everyday speech of the people 
is replete with gross exaggerations, that 
one is at a loss very often to know what is 
meant seriously. 

I distinctly remember the puzzled look American 
on the face of a distinguished French dip- 
lomat at a dinner in Washington, when 
one of the guests, without a smile, told how 
two burglars had broken into the house of 
Jay Gould, but before the police could be 
summoned they were robbed of their tools. 

The so-called funny papers appear each 
week with page after page teeming with 
jokes and stories of this description. There 
is a certain sadness in this very humor. I 
have often thought that in the case of in- 
dividuals, as well as in the case of the pro- 
fessional journalistic purveyors of fun, this 
universal love of gross exaggeration and of 
shocking contrasts is due to a certain fa- 
talism of the people. 

163 



America and the Americans 

Humor and The sharp changes of fortune and of 
iionsi^^ '" social position, the sudden springing into 
political prominence of this man or that, 
the father a pedler, the son a millionnaire ; 
the grandfather penniless, the grandson an 
entertainer of princes ; the mother an Irish 
washerwoman, the daughter the wife of a 
prince ; these changes, so out of the steady- 
line of development, give a fatalistic tinge 
to life here. Consequently, there is much 
trusting to luck, much discontent with the 
steady grind, which is all life has for most 
of us. 

The newspapers parade and picture to 
the masses these almost miraculous changes 
of the wheel of fortune, and make the 
people in many cases to look upon the 
commonplace methods of earning, saving, 
and steady, uneventful work, as distasteful 
and unfair. Fate has this prize for that 
one, or this blank for me. They have not 
lived long enough here to know, or to care 
much about, the theory of averages, or to 
believe very strongly in the possible hap- 
piness of the golden mean. 

The language itself, the speech of the 
164 



American English 



Fatalism. 



man in the street, and the writing in the 
more vulgar news - sheets, are moulded 
somewhat by this sadness and discontent 
on the one hand, and by this turbulent and 
accidental happiness produced by marvel- 
lous changes on the other. 

A surprise, an exaggeration, a success, occidental 
the winning ticket in the lottery, are ever 
to the fore in the minds of many as a pos- 
sibility. Who may not '' strike ile," who 
may not find coal or clay on his property, 
who may not "strike it rich," in a gold 
or silver mine ? 

Nature herself, from this great wealthy 
lap of hers, may tumble out a precious gift 
into the hands of the least likely passer- 
by. 

Language is, after all, but the passing 
cloud-picture of the mind. The reticence 
and the carefully pruned phrases of the 
Briton, the gorgeous compliments of the 
Eastern races, the hazy, all-defining, par- 
enthetic speech of the Germans, the clean- 
cut epigrammatic speech of my own land, 
and this grotesque humor of exaggeration 
or underestimation so common here, are 

165 



America and the Americans 



all typical of the men and the minds be- 
hind them. 

Be it said that to my ears, at least, the 
English of their best people is equal, if not 
better, than that of the same class in Great 
Britain. 

Of the American voice, however, one 
cannot speak so flatteringly. There is a 
hard, rasping, metallic quality about it. 
This, I believe, is due in part to the cli- 
mate, for it is more noticeable in the mid- 
dle West and in northern New England 
than in the South and along the milder 
parts of the coast, though the negroes, 
who have been here now for a century, 
have still very soft, and sometimes even 
sweet, voices. 
An But given a self-confident, perhaps short- 

Vestal. haired and independent, spinster from 
Maine, and nowhere else in the world of 
spoken language is vocalization so distress- 
ing to the ear. The general tendency, too, 
seems to be to speak much too loud. Men 
and women in hotels and tram-cars and 
railway-trains seem, by the loud pitch of 
their voices, to invite you to share what 

i66 



American English 



and the 
7}tan. 



they are saying. The same pubhcity per- 
vades their speech which pervades their 
Hves. 

It is a Frenchman who says that his only The voice 
objection to solitude is that there is no one 
near to whom he may speak of its charm. 
The American might well say that his only 
objection to solitude is that there is no 
crowd to elbow him, or to listen to him. 
This loud, piercing, unmodulated voice, 
reflects the love of a crowd, of bustle, and 
much business. 

I am writing to you, of course, of the men 
and women in the street, so to speak. Well- 
bred people here do not yell in their draw- 
ing-rooms, nor do they screech at their 
dinner-tables, but the general impression 
one receives of speech and voice is as I 
have described it. Both are too loud. 
The haw-hawing hesitancy of the English- 
man even, '' comes as a poultice to heal the 
blows of sound," after much of this hard, 
piercing, and often rasping, speech. A 
Democracy must necessarily produce a dis- 
tinct quality of voice. Where all are free 
to speak, where all assert the right to be 
167 



America and the Americans 

heard, the voices that are to survive must 
be loud and distinct. 

A man may look hke a monkey, and yet 
turn out to be a philosopher ; a man may 
dress like a vagabond, and yet have the in- 
tuitions of a scholar and a gentleman ; the 
face, the expression of the eyes, the dress, 
the manners even, may all be deceptive. 
Nature's but the voicc and speech of men and wom- 
artsocracy. gj^ ^.jjjggjfy tj^gm infallibly. Gentle voices 
and simple speech are the heritage of the 
gentle and the simple alone. Princes who 
are peasants lack them, peasants who are 
princes have them, and here as elsewhere 
one finds princes who are peasants at heart, 
and peasants who are nature's princes. 



i68 




XIII 

Travel I rAm^ricaine 

\N leaving Boston I made my first 
acquaintance with the American 
sleeping-car. During that night- 
journey I was impressed as never 
before with the demoralizing effects of the 
theory of democracy when put in practice. 
The American cars are long and narrow, 
with a passage-way running down the cen- 
tre, from door to door, and seats on each 
side. Each car of the common pattern will 
seat eighty or more people, and the Pull- 
man, or more expensive cars, a few less. 
For an hour or more I sat in one of the com- 
mon cars, in which you are entitled to a 
seat for the payment of the usual fare — in 
the others you pay something additional. 
There are no compartments, there is, of Personal 
course, no privacy. The conductor comes ^^^'"^'^^' 
and goes, slamming the doors at each end 
169 



America and the Americans 

of the car as he enters and passes out. 
Another under-official sticks his head in, 
now and again, and shouts the names of 
stations, and also slams the door. An imp 
A .of infernal origin wends his way up and 

JencL ^ ^'^ down the aisle, offering newspapers, maga- 
zines, fruit, chewing-gum, smelling-salts, 
cigars, candy — which being interpreted 
means bo?i-bons — for sale, and shouting the 
while at the top of his lungs. He pitches 
parcels of chewing-gum, boxes of bon-bons, 
magazines, and paper-covered books into 
your lap, leaves them a moment, and then 
returns to collect them again. 

Apparently there is no redress for the 
impertinences of this youth. To elderly 
gentlemen chewing-gum is given to hold, 
matrons receive copies of sporting-journals, 
copies of Zola or Paul de Kock are given 
to maidens, to nurses with children are, at 
the discretion of this young devil, given 
apples or nuts or candy, for which the 
children cry when he returns to collect 
them. 

This position, which it would seem re- 
quires the sagacity and discrimination of a 
170 



Travel a I'Americaine 



Stan to 
nuisances. 



Ulysses, is filled by a mere apple-giving 
young Paris, who, by his careless distribu- 
tion of highly seasoned literature and de- 
structive edibles and chewibles, may de- 
bauch the minds, and upset the digestions, 
of scores of innocent travellers. 

Here again I pause to express my aston- 
ishment to think that I have the audacity 
to attempt to describe these bewildering Submis- 
Americans even to my own sister. No 
other people would submit to have this 
travel-disturber let loose upon them. No 
down-trodden Armenian but what would 
slay a Turk, were a Turk allowed to tort- 
ure him in this fashion; no Chinaman 
who would not rise and strangle a Japanese 
conqueror who should attempt to tease him, 
by the hour, by the mile, by the whole 
journey, in this manner. 

These good Americans pay the railroad 
company a round sum for transportation, 
and then permit themselves to be put in 
a cage, with a monkey in uniform, who 
shoves baskets of saliva-polished apples un- 
der their noses, who tumbles cheap litera- 
ture into their laps, who plays Tantalus to 
171 



America and the Americans 



Practical 
demonstra- 
tion of 
democracy. 



their children with indigestible sweets, and 
who yells his nasalized menu in their ears 
from start to finish of their journey. I re- 
peat, who can understand, who can make 
comprehensible, such a people, to one who 
has not seen them at home ? 

These cars are the typical illustration of 
democracy in practice. Here at last the 
theory is in full working order for inspec- 
tion. In my car there are a hundred people. 
They have all paid the same amount, they 
travel at the same rate of speed, they are 
treated exactly alike. Each seat is as good 
as, and no better than, every other. Sol- 
omon and LeBaudy, Socrates and Smindy- 
rides, St. Francis and Hippocleides, wise 
man and fool, philosopher and debauchee, 
saint and sensualist, here they are at last 
all together, every man on an equality with 
his neighbor, every man treated just like 
every other man, and now, how do we 
like it ? 

I am a republican, the reddest of red re- 
publicans they call me at home, but I do not 
like it. I do not like it because everyone 
is necessarily brought, in point of discom- 
172 



Travel a I'Americaine 



fort at least, to the level of the lowest. A 
German — I know him by the ^^ Also auf 
wiedersehen ! ' ' spoken to his friend as the 
train rolled out of the station — takes off his 
boots, puts up his stockinged feet on the 
rail of the seat, fits his head into a corner 
of the window near him, and goes to sleep, 
to snore. 

Half a dozen seats in front of me is a 
woman with a baby. The baby, fresh from 
heaven, is doubtless an aristocrat. The 
conductor, the other official, and the train- a dis- 
monkey slam doors, and yell the baby into ^aristocrat, 
a frenzy. It wails and cries and screams. 
I pity the mother, to be sure, but as I have 
none of the compensating comforts of that 
baby when it crows and goos and smiles, 
I see no reason why, with a hundred oth- 
ers, this baby should play upon my nerves 
as though I were a zither, and the baby an 
automatic thumb-ring, worked by electric- 
ity. I have talked about equality in my 
day, and sometimes, too, of fraternity, but 
now that I am a prisoner in this elongated Over-heated 
cage of equality, heated to the point of suf- 
focation — no wonder catarrh, pneumonia, 

173 



cars. 



America and the Americans 

and consumption play havoc here — rushing 
through space propelled by that non -recog- 
nizer of persons, steam, I am bound to say 
that I like it not. 
Equality at There may be a saint in this car, but 
wars . ^i^^t; can his odor of sanctity do to miti- 
gate the evils of this unwholesome and 
overheated atmosphere? There may be 
a sage in this car, but what can his quiet 
thoughts do to compensate for those infan- 
tile shrieks ? There may be a philosopher 
sitting within a few yards of me, but what 
can he do to guard the innocent against 
the insidious advances of that purveyor of 
literary and candied nuisances ? 

Does not equality in this sense mean 
merely the dead level of the lowest ? Ah, 
but it is replied, no man who thinks, sup- 
poses for a moment that equality means 
more than political equality, equality be- 
fore the law. But, pray, what does this 
political equality portend ? Have not the 
masses in their hands the power to turn 
this nation into just such a company as I 
am describing? Is this indeed not the 
more likely outcome of democracy carried to 

174 



Travel ci I'Americaine 



danger s„ 



its ultimate point ? ^' Le inediocrite inquilte 
etjalouse getnit de tons les succes, parce que 
le champ de genie se retrecit sans cesse d 
ses faibles yeux. ' ' 

What may a tax on incomes, on corpo- 
rations, on railroads, on great commercial 
companies not do toward levelling all down 
to the feeblest ? And why may not these Possible 
jealous and discontented voters bring about 
just such a state of things, w^here commer- 
cial shrewdness, where inventive talent, 
where thrifty investing of one's surplus, 
may be made fruitless ? I see no reason. 
The Constitution itself is subject to amend- 
ments under certain conditions, and noth- 
ing else stands in the way. 

That car full of overheated sovereigns, 
each with the sceptre of a vote in his 
hands, made me shiver. I admit this the 
more frankly, because if my critics pooh- 
pooh at me, they must needs do the same 
at the scores of financiers who re-invested 
large sums in England during the late war, 
and at many others, who have once or twice 
of late years, during a financial or political 
panic, sent large deposits of money to Ca- 

175 



America and the Americans 

nadian banks or hidden away their gold. I 
am not alone in thus imagining possible dis- 
asters, I am only alone in having no reason 
for not confessing what I think. 

I find as a rule that most Americans 
are little disturbed by such a line of 
discussion. The immense wealth of the 
country, the astounding progress of the 
last hundred years, and the terrible strain 
of the War of the Rebellion so successful- 
ly borne, these give them confidence and 
make them hopeful. Then, too, they are 
not, as a people, seriously interested in the 
graver problems of life. 

This same car full of people is illustra- 
tive of another feature of this civilization, 
namely, the dislike of solitude, the love of 
publicity. I had the audacity on one oc- 
An editor casion to ask a certain editor how it was 
Tiz^/es^.""' that people permitted his journal to print 
their names so continually. He looked at 
me as a cat might look if asked why the 
mice did not come out and share the rug 
before the fire with her. ' ' I have hun- 
dreds of notes, some anonymous, some 
signed, sent me describing how this one 

176 



Travel ^ V Americaine 



publicity. 



or that participted in this or that festivity 
or was present at this or that function ! 
I will not say that everybody is pleased 
to see his name in print, but most peo- 
ple are, and some people feel injured if 
their names are omitted when they think 
that they should have been inserted. 
There are men and women in this very The light of 
city," he went on, '' who, it is well known, 
send anonymously to the newspapers 
' puffs ' and gossip about themselves, or 
their friends or relatives whom they are 
endeavoring to boost up the social lad- 
der." 

This long funnel of a car contained 
many people who enjoyed this close prox- 
imity of strangers. Many of the hotels 
make no provision for privacy, and guests 
are expected to frequent the public rooms, 
and, be it said, the guests as a rule prefer 
this. 

I have been in a small inn in Nebraska 
where we were all obliged to come from 
our rooms to perform our ablutions to- 
gether downstairs. 

The large summer hotels — of which 

177 



America and the Americans 



An 

adventure 
at the 
White 
House. 



more later — offer hardly more privacy than 
bee-hives, and the parlors, piazzas, and din- 
ing-rooms are liked because there every- 
body is close to, and meets, everybody 
else. 

Very many people here, I was surprised 
to find, although they can afford to live 
apart, in houses of their own, much prefer 
what is called *' hotel -life " and live in 
hotels and boarding-houses, from choice. 
There is more life and go and change, 
one sees more people, one is left less to 
one's self, and many Americans, both men 
and women, prefer this. 

I shall never forget on my former visit to 
America my adventure at the President's 
residence in Washington. I was taken 
there by a member of the federal Senate. 
We met in the hall downstairs a negress who 
was one of the servants. She asked me if I 
would like to see the President. Of course 
I said '' yes." Whereupon I followed her 
upstairs, she knocked, then opened a door, 
and, to my horror, there I was intruding 
upon the President of the United States, 
without excuse or invitation. 



178 



Travel a I'Amiricaine 



I was not thrown out of the window, I 
was invited to be seated, and President ' 
Hayes and I had a chat, and there my es- 
teemed friend, the senator, afterward found 
me. It may be that this particular Presi- 
dent was pecuhar in his domestic arrange- 
ments, but I could not help wondering how 
such intrusions could be looked upon as 
other than a bold-faced robbery of the 
peoples' time and energy, as represented 
in their chief magistrate. 

I am told, however, that the people take ^^Quiscus- 
offence at any official who attempts to se- 'cus%'Jfs7' 
elude himself, or who puts up barriers 
between him and them. Just how, much- 
engaged public officers contrive to do their 
necessary work puzzled me somewhat. I 
suggested, perhaps impertinently, that every 
public official be enclosed in a transparent 
cell of some kind, so that he might at 
all times be open to inspection by the peo- 
ple without being interrupted by them. 

When I returned to my own car after 
my sojourn in the other, I found a scene of 
great activity. A negro servant was per- 
forming a miracle. He lifted up the floor 

179 



America and the Americans 

of the car, he pulled down the ceiling, and 
African from obscure places he produced curtains, 
inancy. pillows and sliccts, blaukcts and mattresses, 
and with great rapidity and dexterity he 
transformed the whole car into a series of 
curtained compartments. 

He pulled aside my curtain with a grin, 
and lo ! there was a bed, and above that 
another bed, and in the upper one an oc- 
cupant, and, if you please, a woman ! He 
apologized for this by saying that the car 
was very crowded, and in a conversation 
with him later I learned that, as a rule, it 
is intended that only men, or only wom- 
en, should be put in layers behind the 
same pair of curtains. 

However, to bed I went, undressing 
with some difficulty, and, though the air was 
close, I slept well. In the morning there 
was a scene of indescribable confusion. 
Men, women, and children, dishevelled and 
partly dressed, appeared at intervals from 
Democratic behind the curtains, making their way, 
some to one end, some to the other, of 
the car, where in a very small compart- 
ment one performed his ablutions. Every- 
i8o 



Travel a V Americaine 



one was good-humored, and we brushed our 
hair and rinsed our mouths, and washed 
our hands in innocency, fraternity, and 
equahty, and, be it said, with soap and 
water furnished to all alike by the railroad 
company. 

As if by magic, under the manipulations Presto! 
of this negro prestidigitator, the floors and '""^^^^ 
ceilings opened, the beds disappeared, and 
we were in our seats again. In some of 
the trains in which you travel for days and 
nights together on a long journey, there are 
libraries, pianos, smoking-rooms, barber- 
shops, and dining-cars, and let me not omit 
to mention type-writers — what a busy peo- 
ple they are, to be sure ! 

The emigrant trains have cars no better 
than the old fourth -class cars in Germany. 
People in the less luxurious carriages get 
out at the stations here and there and make 
a hasty meal. 

I should much like to have the dissecting 
of one traveller who at one of these stop- 
ping-places, in seven minutes by my watch, 
ate two little bird-dishes full of raw oysters, 
four ham sandwiches, a large section of 

i8i 



America and the Americans 

pie, which looked as though it were stuffed 
with insects — mince pie, they call it — and 
drank one glass of beer and two bowls of 
cafe au lait, and then hurried to the train 
Doughnuts with two doughnuts and an apple — a dough- 

anddyspep. • , . , , r , , , 

sia. nut is a braided mass of sweetened dough 

fried in lard. The Lord have mercy on 
his wife and children if they are his com- 
panions when he undertakes to digest these 
things ! No wonder he was sallow and 
thin ! No wonder the social aristocracy 
here is recruited in more than one instance 
from those enriched by the sale of patent 
medicines ! 



182 




XIV 
The Black Belt 

ERE it not for the fact that 
there is about one negro to 
every eight whites in the 
United States, the sleeping- 
cars might solve the race - problem here. 
The employment of negroes in this wise is 
assuredly well adapted to the negro, and 
grateful to the whites. The negro is singu- 
larly deft of hand, generally good-humored 
and obliging, and obsequious for a small 
sum in silver. 

But my visits to Washington, Norfolk, 
and one or two other places in the South, 
showed me how grave is this problem here, 
of which we reck so little, and, indeed, 
hear so little, in Europe. 

In the four States of Virginia, North a few 
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the 
white population in 1870 was 2,319,152; 
in 1890 it had increased to 3,515,869. 

183 



figures. 



America and the Americans 

In those same four States the negro popu- 
lation in 1870 was 1,865,447; in 1890 
it had increased to 2,744,285. In the 
eight States of Tennessee, Alabama, Mis- 
sissippi, Louisiana, and the four already 
mentioned, which together are called the 
White ** Black Belt," the white population is 

"pipuiation, 5,658,517; the black population, 5,155,- 
124, and at the past rate of increase the 
blacks will soon (if they do not now, the 
above figures being for 1890) outnumber 
the whites. 

In the three States of Mississippi, Lou- 
isiana, and South Carolina, the negroes 
already outnumber the whites by half a 
milHon. 

But why, it may be asked, does this 
ever-increasing percentage of negroes con- 
stitute a menace to the political prosperity 
of this great democracy ? For the same 
reason that so many other problems assume 
forbidding proportions, because here they 
are trying the experiment of being a democ- 
racy, without being a democracy. 

These eight millionsof slaves were freed, 
and then, as a political afterthought, the 
184 



The Black Belt 



suffrage was given to them, at a time when 
something like ninety per cent, of them 
were ilhterate. 

It was the great President Lincoln him- President 

o Lincoln's 

self who said, only a year before the war view. 
between the North and South broke out : 
'' I am not, and never have been, in favor 
of bringing about in any form the social 
and political equality of the white and 
black races. There is a physical difference, 
which forbids them from living together 
on terms of social and political equality. 
And, inasmuch as they cannot so Uve, 
while they do remain together, there must 
be a position of superior and inferior, and 
I, as much as any other man, am in favor 
of having the superior position assigned to 
the whites." 

Common-sense, amounting to political 
genius, was the characteristic of this great 
American statesman, and in these few 
words just quoted is expressed what is prac- 
tically the universal sentiment of thought- 
ful Americans on this subject. To give 
these people the right to vote was a mis- 
take, and one that has cost, and proba- 

185 



America and the Americans 

bly will cost, the American people very 
dear. 

There was undoubtedly much sectional 
feeling about the negroes as slaves, but 
there is none about the negro as an inferior. 
In Boston the negro is as much tabooed 
as he is in Norfolk. Almost fifty-seven 
per cent, of them are illiterate now, and 
even this, I was told, is very much under 
the real figure, for in some States they are 
required to read in order to vote, and they 
are all ambitious to be thought to be able 
to read, so that the statistician's work is 
peculiarly difficult. 
Slack Of the total number of prisoners in the 

^rft^nait. United States, 57,310 are whites, and 
24,277 are negroes. In short, the blacks 
are as one to almost nine of the population, 
but as one to almost two of the criminals. 
Nor do these last figures take into account 
those of them who are summarily punished 
without process of law. 

It might be supposed, from these few 

figures perhaps, that I am proposing to 

myself an arraignment of the negroes. 

On the contrary, I like the negroes, what 

186 



The Black Belt 



standing. 



I saw of them in America. We Europeans 
have none of the antipathy to the negro so 
common here, quite as common in the 
North as in the South, let me add. 

A negro in one of the Northern States Their social 
could no more gain admittance as a mem- 
ber to a first-class club, or as a guest in a 
first-class hotel, than to the dinner-table 
of a Southern planter. Equality in this 
as in other cases I have noted, is all very 
well as a theory, but in practice it is ad- 
mitted to be absurd. In Virginia there 
are separate compartments even on the fer- 
ries for the blacks and the whites ; and in 
many places they are not allowed to travel 
in the same cars with the whites, and be 
it not forgotten in this connection that the 
war closed some thirty years ago. 

Men born when the war opened are now 
men of mature years, men who have known 
nothing of slavery, men who can have 
bitter feelings on this subject only by the 
attenuated thread of inheritance or tradi- 
tion, and yet these men have even a less 
friendly, and a more contemptuous, feeling 
toward the negroes than their ancestors. 
187 



America and the Americans 

Pray remember that I am not giving 
these impressions from what I have heard 
from politicians, or from what was said, so 
Non- to speak, d mon intention. No one knew of 

ientimlnts. me as Other than a Frenchman on a pass- 
ing diplomatic errand, and I was not 
talked to, or talked at, as a man whom it 
was necessary to instruct or to influence. 
This printing of pages from my journal was 
no more in their thoughts than in mine, 
and this, instead of being a disadvantage, 
was a positive advantage ; the only inter- 
est, if it have interest at all, of my journal 
being that I was merely a passing guest in 
America, and neither suspected, nor sus- 
pecting myself, of being a future critic. 

Said a large planter to me as we were 
riding through his fields : '^ The great mis- 
A practical take they make in the North is in holding 
^*^"'* that they freed the negroes. They didn't 

free the negroes, they freed us ! " He 
meant by that that he was no longer re- 
sponsible as he had been before, and he 
spoke as though he were happier without 
the responsibility. 

In clubs, hotels, and private houses I 
1 88 



The Black Belt 



kept repeating the question : ''Do you re- 
gret the emancipation of the slaves ? ' ' 
The answer, without exceptions, was always 
the same hearty ''No!" The only in- 
dividuals who told me that they regretted 
the abolition of slavery were negi'oes. They 
are children in intellect and in morals, and 
many of them who had been slaves, and 
who are now free, would, no doubt, prefer 
to shift the responsibilities of life back on 
to a master's shoulders again. 

Even in so large a city as Norfolk the 
negroes retain their old-time customs. They 
come to the houses as servants, but they go 
back to their own cabins and small houses 
to sleep at night, and they deem it one of 
their rights to carry home with them, each 
evening, a basketful of scraps and odds 
and ends from the kitchen, and often, it is 
hinted, they do not confine their pickings 
to mere odds and ends. 

Small thefts, small lies, and living e?i African 
libre grace or co7mne les oiseaux, are not 
counted among them as sins, though their 
religious enthusiasm at their own meetings 
is more violent than anything I have ever 

189 



America and the Americans 

seen anywhere else in the world. A cer- 
tain negress was much hurt when she was 
dismissed for stealing one of her mistress's 
gowns, after giving as an excuse that she 
wanted it to be baptized in ! No doubt 
she considered the mistress as altogether 
lacking in piety of the right sort, 

I trust that I have not said too much of 
the pleasures of eating and drinking in 
America, but it were surely a mere mock- 
ery of reality not to note the fried chicken, 
the waffles, the shad, the shad-roes (deli- 
cious morsels), the corn-bread, the reed- 
birds, the terrapin, the ducks (red-head 
and canvas-back), the broiled robbins, the 
smoked hams, the variety of hot cakes and 
rolls, the melons, peaches and strawber- 
ries of this, Brillat-Savarin's own country. 

Nor should I be content to let these 
pages go, without a word of the boundless 
Southern and chamiiug hospitality of my Southern 
hosts, and the friends of my hosts. I know 
little of their past errors and trials, but I 
have every reason to know that now they 
are most generous and courteous. One 
hears occasionally from some widowed and 

190 



hospitality. 



The Black Belt 



childless matron a note of bitterness about 
the past, but who would not forgive her 
that? 

There is far more bitterness of feeling 
between Frenchmen and Germans, and 
even between Frenchmen and Englishmen, 
than between the Southerners and the 
Northerners. There seems to be a gentle- 
manly feeling that '' we had a good fight 
for it, and we were beaten ; now let's say 
no more about it." 

If I may be permitted to say a word The carpet- 
in this rather delicate family controversy, 
it would be that the Northern politician of 
the small and conscienceless stripe has done 
more than anybody else since the war to 
keep up the irritation. He profits by a 
certain amount of sectional feeling, and, 
therefore, he does nothing to allay it. He 
knows as well as the Southerner that it is 
ruin to allow the negroes to exercise the 
suffrage uncontrolled — in several of the 
States just after the war it was actual ruin 
— and yet he harps upon the fact that the 
negro vote is not counted. 

In the District of Columbia the negro 

191 



America and the Americans 

does not vote, and several Northern federal 
senators voted that the negro be dis- 
franchised there, and no one of them 
dreams of wishing now that it were other- 
wise, it must be then a sign of hypoc- 
risy to make so much of the fact that the 
negro vote is not counted in the South. It 
is not counted, it ought not to be counted, 
and to count it would mean bankruptcy 
and commercial prostration now, as was 
the case before. The mistake was made, 
and in the South they make the best prac- 
tice they can of a bad theory, and to do 
anything else would only redound to their 
own and to the negroes' ruin. 
Negro char- There are notable exceptions ; but to 
this day the negroes are shiftless, careless, 
good-natured, and improvident. Their 
code of morals is entirely different from 
that of civilized whites, either in Europe 
or in America. Their facial angle is seventy 
degrees, that of the white man eighty- 
two ; their morals are those of les oiseaux. 
San Domingo, Liberia, South Carolina, 
and Alabama — at the close of the war when 
negroes were in political control — are con- 
192 



actertstics. 



The Black Belt 



elusive evidence of their inability to govern 
themselves; like ill-bred children, liberty 
has made some of them arrogant and in- 
clined to push in where they are not 
wanted. 

These facts being true, it is, so it seems 
to me at least, a matter upon which South- 
erners ought to be congratulated, and upon 
which all Americans ought to rejoice, that 
these millions of negroes in the South live 
in the midst of their white brethren in such 
security and peace. 

The lynchings and burning of negroes. Lynching. 
and other atrocious cruelties, are punish- 
ments meted out for unmentionable crimes. 
In London, Paris, and Berhn the law is 
one thing; in Texas, which covers about 
the same area as Europe, and in other 
Southern States, swift legal redress is next 
to impossible without a standing army of 
police. 

Remember your own wives, sisters, and 
baby-girls ; remember that you are not 
in Paris or Lyons or Marseilles, but in 
a thinly populated wilderness, and see if 
your eyes do not wander instinctively to 



93 



America and the Americans 

your gun-case or your pistol-drawer ! Re- 
member that these Southerners are Saxons 
and Huguenots one or two hundred years 
away from home, and in this, as in many 
other painful affairs of this life, perhaps 
comprendre c' est pardonner. 



194 




XV 

Improvidence 

IT is in the South more espe- 
cially, but it applies to the 
country at large, that one is 
shocked by the wastefulness of 
the Americans. 

At a certain house in Baltimore I was 
permitted to go into the kitchen. There 
must have been a dozen, perhaps twenty, 
negroes in these rooms below stairs. I 
asked my hostess if she found it necessary 
to have so many servants. '' Oh, those An 

illustration 

are not all my servants, she replied, *' but 
there are always a lot of hangers-on in the 
kitchen ! " I could fancy the horror of 
my sister, of my mother, should such a 
sight greet their eyes on descending to their 
kitchen, but my hostess took it most good- 
humoredly, and answered the grins and 
the shining rows of white teeth, which 

195 



America and the Americans 

greeted her in her own kitchen, with gra- 
cious words and kindly nods. 

It is unfortunate that the majority of 
the house-servants in America are Irish 
and negroes, the two most wasteful and un- 
economical races we know and of a differ- 
ent creed from their masters. It was told 
me by one of the oldest employees in the 
most famous restaurant in New York, that 
twenty years ago, before there were as 
many well-conducted restaurants and ho- 
tels as now, in their establishment, with 
French French cooks and European servants, they 
saved so much that was thrown away by 
other American proprietors of similar 
places, that their profits upon waste alone 
enabled them for years to remain beyond 
rivalry. "We made dishes out of what 
our neighbors would have thrown away, 
and dishes, too, that people from all over 
the country came to this historical restau- 
rant to eat." It was a Frenchman who 
told me that, and I believe him. 

Of course it was not possible very often 
to visit the kitchens and to discover what 
was thrown away in the houses of my 

196 



economy. 



Improvidence 



friends. But some of my hosts were so 
kind as to tell me the costs of their kitch- Costo/ 
ens, their servants, their stables, and their ^^^"^' 
wine-cellars. Butter at five francs a pound, 
fresh eggs at three francs a dozen, cham- 
pagne at one hundred and seventy-five 
francs a dozen — and this not the best — 
servants at the ruinous wages I have men- 
tioned elsewhere, rents in proportion, and, 
worse than all, careless, uninterested ser- 
vants, who clear up after each meal by 
tossing everything that is left into the 
refuse-heap. 

No wonder there are ever - increasing Europe 
complaints that it costs too much to live ^^''■^^^^ 
here. No wonder thousands of American 
families have learnt the secret, and adopted 
the plan of going to Europe for a year, 
every now and then, to save money. 

The country itself has been somewhat 
to blame for this lack of economy. Iron, 
gold, silver, copper, wheat-fields for the 
mere ploughing, thousands of square miles 
of grazing-land for the taking, fish, flesh, 
fowl, and fruit in bewildering profusion, 
millions of acres of good land still unoccu- 

197 



tncotne. 



America and the Americans 

pied ', no wonder such a wealthy mother, 
careless of her bounties, has made her 
children spendthrifts. 

I have met Americans abroad who lived 
at the best hotels, who seemed to have 
plenty to spend, but who here, I found, 
have three servants and entertain not at all. 
They make money fast, then spend that, 
then make more, and so on. 
Capital and We old-fashioned Europeans like to feel 
that we are living on our incomes, not 
on our capital, but here in the fresh be- 
wilderment of ever-increasing wealth they 
spend their capital ; hence it is that many 
Americans in Europe give the impression 
of having more than they have. Not 
through any intention on their part, I 
fancy, to mislead, but merely because our 
standard o^ expenditure is the income from 
capital, while theirs is very onen capital 
itself. 

Then, too, the burden of expenditure is 
not placed here as it is in Europe. The 
European looks forward to his own house, 
his own stable, to servants and domestic 
comfort. The American, all too often, 

198 



Improvidence 



saves on his home to spend outside of it. 
I mean by that, that there is to European 
eyes a disproportionate expenditure on the 
dress of the women and the children, on 
meals at restaurants, on theatre-going, on 
summer holidays, on general lavishness 
outside the home. 

People who in France and England 
would have servants enough, who would en- 
tertain more in their homes, who would 
put aside each year for their children, who 
would rigidly restrict the outside expen- 
ditures, are represented here by family af- 
ter family, in hotels and boarding-houses, 
people who travel in Europe, who spend 
each year about what they earn, who enter- 
tain seldom or never, and who do not know 
even what it means to be properly cared 
for by servants. 

You need travel only as far as Chicago Mushroom 
to see a city which fifty years ago was ^^'^^ 
merely a traders' post with a few log -huts, 
a city where a man-servant in the house, 
even now, is as rare as the Qgg of a great 
auk, and yet a city of enormous prosper- 
ity. I was driven about in Chicago on a 
199 



grants. 



America and the Americans 

coach with four horses, I visited two luxuri- 
Luxury ous clubs, I saw niilcs of expensive houses, 
7idinel's. and I left cards at, at least, three houses 
where the door was opened by a slatternly 
woman-servant with her sleeves rolled up — 
perhaps I called at an unusual hour ; I do 
not know as to that, none of us is infallible. 
We in France laugh a good deal at the 
overdressed women of the servant and 
lower middle class in England, but the 
immi- Irish, Swedes, and Germans here appear 

in truly gorgeous raiment — seal -skin and 
velvet and silk and plumes and flowers 
I have seen repeatedly on them — and these 
good Americans pay them fabulous wages, 
receive in return the worst service in the 
world, and look surprised when you suggest 
that perhaps matters are a little upsidedown. 
I have seen a German woman, scarce able 
to speak English, with three children, done 
up in velveteen and silks and sashes, who 
at home would not dare to appear with her 
family so clad for fear of the wholesale ridi- 
cule she would invite. 

These immigrants soon grasp the failing 
of the Americans, and presume upon their 



Improvidence 



indifference and take advantage of their 
good-nature to an extent that simply dum- 
founds the European who has heard of how 
sharp, how shrewd, and calculating are the 
Americans. 

I sometimes think that these people who inebriation 
have been rich for only two generations are ''prosperity. 
just a little mad. Money and prosperity 
have come so fast, immense fortunes have 
been made so quickly, the change from the 
most meagre and curtailed life of the first 
quarter of this century to the oriental pro- 
fusion of expenditure in the larger cities 
now, has turned their heads. They fancy 
that the perpetual spring of prosperity 
bubbles up in this great land, and that they 
need take no care for the morrow. 

In the ten years, 1880-90, their debt de- 
creased 5,152,786,300 francs, or more than 
500,000,000 francs a year. 

In the aggregate of all expenditures, na- 
tional. State, and local, the receipts for 
one year, lately, exceeded the expenditures 
by 77,914,460 francs. One must admit 
that such figures may make a people fool- 
ishly confident. 

201 



America and the Americans 

What does this occidental nabob care if 
servants rob him, laugh at him behind his 
back, and serve him ill ! What does he 
care if his wife dresses far beyond her needs 
or her station ! What does he care if in 
the drawing-rooms of New York one sees 
more jewels worn than in any of the pal- 
aces of Europe ! What does he care if the 
poverty-stricken Irish, the needy Swedes, 
and Scandinavians, the penniless Italians, 
the cormorant Jews, the Poles and Hunga- 
rians, and the Chinese — until recently — 
flock here to fatten upon his wastefulness ! 
What harm can he see in the nauseating 
frequency of the talk about what things 
cost, how much this one and that one has, 
by men and women, and even children ! 
Monte Hogs and bullocks, in processions miles 

w^eaitV ^ loi^gj hurry through his slaughter-houses; 
his wheat-fields are measured, not by paltry 
acres but by square miles. He has a net- 
work of thousands of miles of mortgaged 
railroads ; five thousand millions of francs 
are invested here, it is said, by Europeans 
whose eyes have been dazzled by these 
opportunities, his cities jump from a log- 
202 



Improvidence 



cabin to a population of over a million in 
one short lifetime, a civil war costs him half 
a million sons or so, and thousands of mill- 
ions of francs; financial panics, anarchist 
revolutions, a band of Turks in Utah keep- 
ing harems by the grace of divine revela- 
tion, millions of francs stolen from State and 
city treasuries, these are nothing to him, for 
in spite of it all he put aside between 1880 
and 1890 more than 500,000,000 francs 
each year. No wonder he thinks that he 
can never be seriously ill, never be without 
plenty, and to spare. 

Economy goes by the name of meanness Economy 
here. When I see my dollars going as p'''^ 
though they were francs, when I offer my 
poor pour-boires, when I say I cannot 
afford this or that, when I give my small 
parting gifts, a book or some other trifle, I 
feel that these people look upon me with 
pity, as lean and hungry, and, perhaps, as 
parsimonious. 

• But our vocabularies are different, as are 
our measurements and our expectations. 
Economy is not meanness with us, nor is 
carefulness deemed parsimony, nor is a 
competency expected to be wealth, nor is 
203 



ar simony. 



America and the Americans 



Childish 

suspicions 

and 

childish 

remedies. 



lavishness supposed to be refinement, nor 
are material possessions mistaken for cult- 
ure, nor fine feathers taken for fine birds. 

It is all like a dream of fat kine to me, 
for I have been trained to economy, ob- 
liged to be careful, educated to feel that a 
gentleman should be master of his pos- 
sessions, not merely paraded about the 
world upon them, like a monkey riding an 
elephant in a street-show. 

Nor am I in the least convinced, on 
sober second thought, that this country 
has found an Aladdin's lamp that will 
never go out. My quiet friend who has 
been so good to me in New York, tells me 
that money used to bring ten per cent. — 
that now it fetches only four or five. He 
tells me that this decrease in dividends 
is slowly making itself felt among the 
masses, and that they do not, or will not, 
understand that it is a universal economic 
law which is slowly closing its iron hand 
on America. He says also that there are 
signs of revolution about, murmurings of 
discontent on the part of the poor against 
the rich, in the air. The poor think, after 



204 



Improvidence 



these years of seemingly unending pros- 
perity, that the rich have stolen away the 
prosperity, and that to attack them is to get 
it back again. They are even now crying 
out for more money, more money, as 
though money could be turned out by 
machinery at Washington, the national 
capital j as though money were anything 
other than a simple sum in arithmetic, the 
multiplication of the fruits of the earth by 
labor. We know that money is only that, 
but they do not know it here, or will not 
admit it if they do ! 

It is little short of comical to hear and 
to read how these spendthrifts propose to 
print paper, and to call it money ; or to 
stamp silver with an American eagle and 
the name of God, and call it money. 

Alas ! great wealth has its responsibilities Res^onsibu. 
and its lessons, whether the heir be an w/^ 
individual or a nation. Neither as indi- 
viduals nor as a nation have they felt the 
responsibihties or learnt the lesson here. 
A Frenchman, an Englishman, or an Aus- 
trian, and even some Russians, feel that 
they must take care of money ; in the case 
205 



America and the Americans 



French 
savings. 



Contempt 
for a 
competency. 



of very many Americans, at any rate, they 
feel only one duty toward money, and that 
is to spend it. 

In France there is one savings bank ac- 
count, averaging over five hundred francs, 
for every six men, women, and children. 
The total yearly deposits in these banks is 
in round numbers 1,000,000,000 francs. 
If we add to these the Postal savings banks 
as well, there is one account for every four 
and one half people in all France. Thou- 
sands of people in France look forward to 
an assured income of 5,000 to 10,000 
francs per annum, and even less, as a hap- 
py outcome of years of steady toil. Pray, 
where is the American, even though his 
mother was an Irish peasant, or his father 
a Polish Jew, or a Swedish laborer, whose 
dream is to have only an income of ^1,000 
a year ! 

This is the heart of the trouble, the 
root of the discontent here. Their aims 
are too high, their expectations absurdly 
out of proportion. They are not satisfied 
with enough, they want too much, in order 
that they may waste some of it in the vul- 
206 



Improvidence 



garities that are the fashion. By what law, 
human or divine, these people hope to have, 
all of them, more, each individual, than the 
individuals and families of other countries, I 
cannot understand. They have had more — 
that is readily explained by the opening up 
of a marvellous country — but in time things 
will right themselves, and a very little fig- 
uring will show the futihty of supposing 
that 75,000,000 of people on one side of 
the Atlantic are all to have thousands, while 
a far larger number of people, more indus- 
trious and more economical, on the other 
side of the Atlantic, are only to have tens 
and twenties. 

I thank God that I am not to be here, a hard 
that my mother and my sister are not to be 
here, when these millions come face to face 
with the fact that they must learn to be eco- 
nomical, for that is the whole of the prob- 
lem. 

I foresee a mad war of races, interests, 
and classes when that time shall come, and 
sometimes I think it is not so very far off 
even now. 

There are 8,000,000 negroes here, there 
207 



lesson. 



America and the Americans 

Some are about 1,750,000 people here who can- 

^figufeV ^ not speak English, the foreign-born popu- 
lation numbers over 9,000,000, and the il- 
literates over ten years of age number near- 
ly 6,500,000, aggregating more than one- 
third of the total population. 

This occidental nabob is undoubtedly a 
very vigorous man, but these figures show 
that he has some tough morsels to digest. 
If I were he I should take particular care of 
my healih, no matter how well and strong 
I felt myself to be. 



208 




XVI 

L'Enfant Terrible 

^NE of the books given me to 
read before my first visit to 
America was a story by Mr. 
i Henry James, entitled, I be- 
lieve, *' Daisy Miller." In it is a short 
account of an American boy, who, among a typical 
other things, is made to say : '' My pa is ^°^' 
all-fired rich, you bet ! " 

I asked another American novelist, well 
known to all readers of English whom I met 
in New York, if the American boy was in 
the habit of making such vulgar speeches. 
''You are travelling about in America," 
said he, ''take note of the behavior of 
American children in public and in private, 
and then tell me what you have decided 
about them. You come here with a fresh 
eye. What is indifferent to me is new and 
notable to you, and when you have been 
here three months you will know many 
209 



America and the Americans 

things that custom has made me too dull to 
discover. ' ' 

I believe this is true, not only in regard 
to children, or any other one subject, but to 
most subjects. The passing stranger falls 
into many errors, but he hears and sees 
hundreds of details that the native has 
grown so accustomed to that they no longer 
attract his attention. Many men can sleep 
and eat and work with the din of the city 
streets in their ears, for they have grown 
deaf to them. The countryman who comes 
to the city hears each different noise, and 
for weeks can neither sleep nor work in 
comfort. It may well be that I exaggerate 
the impressions I chronicle here, but, at any 
rate, they are noises that I actually heard 
with my ears, and sights that I saw with 
my own eyes. 

It is three months and more since I saw 
my friend, the American novelist, in New 
York, and when I see him I fancy that there 
will be a satiric twinkle in his eye when I 
broach the subject of the American child. 

I have heard the Henry James incident, 
not once, but several times. I will give 

2IO 



L'Enfant Terrible 



His parents Muurboy. 



Children^ 
children 
every- 
where. 



only one example. The boy was perhaps Another 
twelve or fourteen years old 
were, to all appearance, rich. We were 
sitting on the deck of a steamer, and some 
remark was made about lifts in private 
houses. The boy was asked if there was 
one in his house. " No," was the reply, 
* ' but my popper [papa was intended] is 
rich enough to have one if he wanted to ! " 
It is needless to give other verbatim re- 
ports of similar speeches from American 
children ; suffice it to record the fact that 
this was by no means the only one I heard. 
Often I stood about and, without appearing 
to do so, I listened to the conversations of 
different groups of children — this is easy, 
often unavoidable in America — for the 
children are everywhere en evidence. They 
are in the railway-trains, in the tram-cars, 
in the hotel corridors, in the restaurants, at 
the theatres ; they dine at night at the 
fable d'hote with their parents, they come 
down and order their own breakfasts in the 
hotel restaurant, and in some of the sum- 
mer hotels they are like flies in, on, around, 
and into, everything. They talk back to, 



211 



America and the Americans 

contradict, and disobey their parents in the 
presence of strangers, and there is no 
amendment to the Constitution giving them 
special privileges, simply because they have 
these without irksome legal formalities. 

Nor are these poor, or, according to 
American standards, ill-bred, children of 
whom I am writing. All the children 
whose manners and speeches I have noted 
down, belong to parents who could not pos- 
sibly live as they do with less than an in- 
come of from thirty to sixty thousand 
francs a year. Hence they are children to 
whom the best sources of education and 
companionship are open. 

Americans, of whatever age, are very 
prone to tell you what things cost, because 
about many of the rarer possessions among 
this world's goods, that is the only accurate 
knowledge of them they have. But it is 
unspeakably shocking to hear this continual 
Money placing of a money value upon everything 
by children — " My sled cost so much, my 
pony, my shoes, my coat, my hat cost so 
much ! " You hear it like a chorus from 
children everywhere. They tell one an- 

212 



values. 



L'Enfant Terrible 



other what this, that, and the other posses- 
sion of theirs cost, and they boast of how 
rich are their respective parents. 

They are irreverent and independent to 
a shocking degree. What I have never 
seen approached for barbaric heartlessness, 
I saw in New York City, when I actually 
saw some small boys throwing snowballs at 
a funeral procession. 

It was quite needless to ask my novelist 
friend about American children after this 
experience. Pliny should have visited PJiny's 

'■ •' dictum, 

America before writing somewhat lugubri- 
ously of the children of his own time and 
country as follows : ' ' How many are there 
who will give place to a man out of respect 
for his age and dignity? They are shrewd 
men already and know everything; they 
are in awe of nobody, but take themselves 
for their own example." Every word of 
this is true of these American children. 
It is no wonder that politics are as they 
are here, if the politicians are to be drawn 
from these young Saxon Bedouins. It is 
no wonder that, growing up as they do 
without discipline and without manners, 

213 



America and the Americans 



Patria 
potestas. 



Indiffer- 
ence to 
authority. 



they cannot play their youthful games when 
at college against one another without the 
quarrels and accusations and tu quoqiies of 
the prize-ring and the pot-house. 

Here again we see the theory of inde- 
pendence carried even into the realm of 
domestic life, and with what dire results. 
There is no such thing as the patria po- 
testas, no recognition of authority, even by 
the children of a household to their natural 
head. 

In some of the homes that I visited, it 
was only too apparent that * ' home ' ' was 
merely a fa^on de parler. There was no 
unity of thought, speech, or action. Each 
one was a unit, even the youngest, and 
each had his friends, his opinions, his en- 
gagements, and even his affections, and each 
one was infallible. The timidity in assert- 
ing even lawful authority, and the con- 
tempt for it, which one sees in American 
politics, is learnt, I firmly believe, in these 
ill-regulated, or rather these unregulated, 
homes. 

Neither the unwritten law of affection of 
French home-life, nor the unwritten law of 



214 



L'Enfant Terrible 



allegiance to the head of the family of 
English home-life, obtains in American 
home-life. What is erroneously called in- 
dulgence of children by parents is nothing 
more nor less than neglect of children by 
parents — and here, of parents by their 
children. 

In Europe we are prone to think, at 
least, that the spoiled child is an excep 
tion, but here the spoiled child is the rule 
rather than the exception, and a very dis- 
agreeable and inconvenient rule he is, too, 
to the stranger, though the native has evi- 
dently ceased to notice him. The Ameri- 
can takes the American child, nuisance 
though he is, as he takes his thieving 
politicians, his Irish municipal rulers, and 
his tyrannous trusts and corporations, 
good-humoredly, and that, at least for the 
present, is the end of it. He does not 
bother his head about the future. 

I have sometimes thought, while travel- 
ling in America, that this almost criminal 
negligence on every hand about the future, Past and 
must be m some way related to the fact '^''^"'''' 
that they have no past here. Their con- 

215 



America and the Americans 

tinued prosperity for a hundred years has 
made them careless and thoughtless, and 
only some awful political or financial catas- 
trophe will bring them to their senses. 

A rich man can afford to be robbed for 
awhile, and he can afford to be carelessly 
lavish and optimistic for awhile, but not 
forever. This Rich Man of the Western 
hemisphere must take account of stock 
some day soon, must realize that the op- 
portunity for vast and rapid accumulations 
of wealth, is not so frequent nor so easy 
as it once was, and that his own vigor is 
declining somewhat ; and when that time 
comes, this chronicle which is read to-day 
as perhaps impertinent criticism, will be 
read then as prophecy. 

This almost universal feeling about the 
future, that it will take care of itself, this 
universal hopefulness, so characteristic of 
the Americans, make the position of Amer- 
ican children more comprehensible. The 
The child a Americans are, as a people, political, so- 
cial, and financial rainbow chasers. No 
matter what the past or the present, they 
see at the other end of the rainbow pros- 

216 



symbol. 



LEnfant Terrible 



perity. The child naturally becomes the 
symbol of this. The child is all future. 
He is taken into account in this country, 
therefore, as a serious and privileged fac- The twig 

. . . and the 

tor. He IS pushed into prommence in pub- tree. 
lie, and in private his impertinences are 
laughed at, and quoted, and he is a shrewd, 
irreverent, disobedient, and sophisticated 
mortal before he sheds his knickerbockers. 
The results do not belie, but support this 
assertion. The political and domestic dis- 
obedience and selfishness, which end in 
political misrule and domestic revolt, are 
more common here than elsewhere. The 
child is father to the <'boss" and the 
divorcee. 

Young girls from fifteen to twenty con- 
duct their flippant and passing flirtations 
unreproved and uninterrupted by parents. 
" I want Sallie to have the small reception- 
room to herself this afternoon. Mr. X. is 
coming to see her, and I want them let 
alone," was the remark of a well-known 
Boston lady to the friend in whose house 
her daughter was staying. The friend in 
question told me this, telling me at the 
217 



America and the Americans 

same time that ''Sallie" was only six- 
teen. 

* ^ But who are these people ? " I am 
asked. *^You must have met queer peo- 
ple." 

On the contrary, this lady and her daugh- 
ters are known to, and received by, Bos- 
ton's most exclusive social world. 

It has not been my desire to look for, or 
to illustrate, my chronicle with odd and 
exceptional instances. If these things ap- 
pear strange or doubtful to Americans, it 
is simply that they do not notice them. 
They may be seen by the casual guest in 
American homes in New York, in Boston, 
Philadelphia, Washington, and Chicago. 
It is not that they are rare, these incidents ; 
it is simply that they are of such constant 
occurrence that the native does not notice 
them. 

In a house in New York in which I had 
the honor to stay for a couple of days, the 
two children, a boy of eight and a girl of 
twelve, took me about certain rooms and 
pointed out to me the various articles, pict- 
ures, and other things that '* Pa has prom- 

218 



L'Enfant Terrible 



ised to leave me when he dies ! ' 

are children early introduced to the serious 

affairs of life ! 

Ah ! but in spite of this sophistication, 
and this laxity of rule in the home, I am 
told, there is much less immorality here than 
in France, in Germany, or in England. 

This statement reveals a curious super- 
ficiahty of the American mind. Ameri- 
cans always speak of ''immorality" as 
though there were but one kind of immor- 
ality, namely, that related to sex. But are 
not disobedience, treachery, foul play, po- 
litical and commercial thieving and jock- 
eying, corruption of officials and legislators, 
bribery, the levying of blackmail — are not 
these also immoral? If the laxity and 
carelessness in the home do not result in 
promiscuous social evils, they do lead to 
disregard of constituted authority — to an 
easy-going disregard of political and com- 
mercial crimes and misdemeanors, un- 
equalled in any other country in the world. 

There are scores of political thieves and 
jobbers in New York, who, so it is said, are 
well known to have made comfortable fort- 



ThuS A dead 

mart's shoes. 



" Immoral' 

ity ? " 



219 



andpolitics. 



America and the Americans 

unes out of the city treasury, and they are 
not only not shunned, but they are feted 
and banqueted. So far as I can learn, a 
man may fail in business, and cheat his 
creditors almost once a year, and yet no 
social disgrace or legal penalty prevents 
his playing the game over and over again. 

Said a prominent member of the Cham- 
ber of Commerce in New York to me : 
Puritanism " It is a sad fact that a man well known to 
be a thief, and a giver and taker of bribes, 
may be elected to office in this country, 
Avhile a man known to be absolutely above 
reproach, so far as financial and political 
integrity is concerned, may be defeated by 
any slander touching the purity of his life, 
even though he be a bachelor." 

The politicians have played without 
ceasing upon this absurd and superficial 
moral code here. A thief is a good man, 
a man who is suspected even of licentious- 
ness is a bad man. Was there ever a more 
absurd moral law than that ? Either both 
are good or both are bad. But the Ameri- 
can is nothing if not superficial where ethi- 
cal distinctions are concerned. 
220 



L'Enfant Terrible 



Then, too, the American is not a sen- 
sualist as a rule, but he does crave wealth 
and notoriety with a mastering passion 
no one can measure, who has not seen it in ThephUos. 

1 TT 1 ophyofit. 

operation on the spot. Hence the sensa- 
tional press of the country revels in high- 
flown denunciation of all breaches of, or 
suspicions of, sexual laxity, but passes over, 
with slight attention, commercial trickery 
and political corruption, and even ap- 
plauds them at times, if they prove suc- 
cessful. 

And the children read these dreadful 
public prints. It is one of their inalien- 
able rights. I have seen scores of them 
poring over illustrated and spicy accounts 
of murder, divorce, rape, lynchings, burn- 
ing of negroes for disgusting crimes, and the 
like. No wonder that at the age of twelve 
or fourteen they shock a poor, innocent 
Frenchman of forty-five by their familiarity 
with the ways of the world. 

'* You can't fool him much," said a 
fond father of one of these juvenile atroci- 
ties to me in a railway-carriage. " No," 
I was tempted to reply, ''neither can you 

221 



America and the Americans 

further corrupt the corrupted nor further 
debauch the debauched imagination, but 
that is hardly a matter to be proud of ! " 
The other But are there no lovely children in the 

"hieid. ' States ? Are there no young girls who 
flirt not, no young men who are respectful 
to their superiors, no politicians who steal 
not, no merchants of unquestioned integ- 
rity, no mothers who are pure and pious ? 
Let me say at once that there are of all 
these many. Some of each class I have 
met. But I am painting a picture for one 
who cannot see details — a picture which is 
to give only outhnes, only the preponder- 
ating colors — therefore I make no apologies 
for what I have written of the American 
child. Were all the children made into 
a composite photograph, that photograph 
would be that of le plus terrible de tous les 
enfa?its terribles. 

It is written in the Talmud that ' ' Les 
enfants doivent etre punis d^une 7nai7i et 
caresses des deux^ That is a wise say- 
ing, taken as a whole, but a fruitless in- 
junction, if the one hand which punishes is 
forgotten. 

222 




XVIl 

"Society" 

FTER a visit to Boston and 
Chicago, and a trip to Wash- 
ington and the South, on busi- 
ness affairs, I met my friend 
again in New York. He robbed himself 
of part of his own holiday, I fancy, to take 
me first to Saratoga and then to Newport, 
and from there I went alone to Bar Har- 
bor, introduced by letters from him and 
others. 

Newport is like an enormous and brill- Newport, 
iant garden in which are palatial homes- 
We have summer - resorts in and out of 
France, all over Europe, in fact, but no one 
place where the wealth and fashion of a 
nation focus themselves as here. 

When an American family gets money 
enough to afford an attack upon the cita- 
del of Society, they begin at Newport. 
Here congregate what are called *'soci- 
223 



America and the Americans 



The social 
kettle. 



Le monde 
oU Von 
s* amuse. 



ety people," from New York especially, 
but from Washington, Philadelphia, Bos- 
ton, and Chicago as well, and for two 
months in the summer the most highly 
polished American social kettle boils and 
bubbles and steams upon the Newport 
hob. 

Here again one notices how these people 
love to be close together. Some of the 
houses are, as I have said, without exaggera- 
tion, palaces, but they are not secluded 
country-seats ; they are all near together, 
and one may stroll from one to the other 
in a few minutes' time. A club or casino 
where they play tennis, where they dance, 
and dine, and lounge is a meeting-place 
where, at certain hours in the day, and on 
certain occasions, people assemble to flan- 
ner, to flutter, to flirt, and to gossip. 

Society in America is not the society of 
power or even of prestige, but merely the 
society of intrigue and amusement. I mean , 
by that, that a man gains nothing of the 
serious victories of life, victories of com- 
merce, of politics, of literary dignity, by 
being known as one of the few thousands 
224 



''Society 



or so who give themselves to this side of 
life. Indeed, both politically and commer- 
cially, I am not sure that he would not lose 
by being conspicuous in this society. 

The great game of life used to be, and is 
still, to some extent, played in the draw- 
ing-rooms in Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, 
and St. Petersburg. You meet there the 
diplomats, the pohticians, the ecclesiastics, 
the distinguished or promising men of let- 
ters or of science, the conspicuous jour- 
nalists and soldiers and sailors, the well- 
known travellers and explorers, and so on. 
One house represents one shade of politi- 
cal or ecclesiastical thought and action, 
and another another, and so on. Society 
is a microcosm of the world. Well intro- 
duced and well mannered, one may see in 
London, in a fortnight, the men and wom- 
en who are making the wheels of their part 
of the world go round. At one house you 
meet one set, at one club another set, and 
so you may go the rounds. 

Society there drags the world for its Society's 
biggest fishes, and you may see the politi- 
cal dolphin, or the exploring whale, or the 
225 



drag-net. 



America and the Americans 

literary whitebait, all in white ties and black 
coats, in a beautiful, big, transparent, bowl 
which is called society. 

It is worth while to be a part of this so- 
cial life, and it becomes almost the most 
interesting portion of a stranger's visit to a 
strange land. I had a week of Newport, 
and a fast week, too. I met at least two 
hundred and more different men and wom- 
en at dinners, dances, picnics, and on 
board a yacht or two, and I stayed part of 
my time in one, and part of my time in 
another, house. The kindness, the hospital- 
ity, the comfort, were lavish. No pleasanter 
people in the world to enjoy a week with, no 
kindlier hosts or more attentive hostesses. 
Your way is made smooth with gold. They 
even have to a certain extent good ser- 
vants, and, as is true of this class of Ameri- 
cans in all the large cities, the best din- 
ners in the world. 
The absent But though I havc Icgs and arms and a 
belly, I have also a head. Where were the 
statesmen, the soldiers, the men of letters, 
the men who are making America move, so 
to speak? One politician I met, a charm- 
226 



ones. 



"Society" 



ing fellow, wealthy and wise, a man who 
takes his part in New York in State and 
city affairs, but he was the only one. The 
great majority of the men were idlers — very 
amiable ones, to be sure — but elections are 
won or lost, *' strikes" are suppressed, 
bridges and railroads are built, treaties 
with other nations are made, new countries 
are discovered and settled, Indian riots and 
negro revolts are subdued, books are writ- 
ten, stocks are sent up or down, laws are 
made, not only without aid from them, but 
even without their knowledge. 

They tell good stories, some of them ; Society hai 
they play games ; they dance, dine, and 
drink ; many of them are mere boys, but 
they are, so to speak, what the frothed 
cream on a pudding is to the cow that 
gives the milk, and Newport might be sub- 
merged in the sea, and the brains and 
daring and progressive energy of America 
would not be disturbed in the very least — 
a certain amount of money would be redis- 
tributed et voila tout ! 

I say this not harshly, but merely to 
mark a difference. For this same thing 

227 



no "Pull.'* 



America and the Americans 

could not be said of London, or Paris, or 
Vienna. The best society of Europe is suc- 
Le monde cess enjoying an idle hour or so ; the best 
Tennuz'e. society here is idleness enjoying its suc- 
cess. One may go into society in Europe 
with a fair expectation of being stimulated, 
no matter what your own particular inter- 
ests are ; you go into society here and you 
are fortunate if, for any length of time, 
you are so much as diverted. In Europe 
they have had money so long that they are 
no longer amused by what mere money can 
do ; here, apparently, society is still content 
with the juggling and transformations, with 
the luxury and the surprises, that gold can 
produce. 

You do not meet the politicians, but 
the contributors to the purchase of them ; 
you do not meet the travellers, journalists, 
statesmen, colonizers, and warriors, but 
merely those who talk about them. To 
that extent, at least, society, so-called, is a 
distinct disappointment. You hear much 
about this young woman's family wishing 
to marry her to that young man whose 
fortune still has the little card-board tags of 
228 



''Society" 

ready-made clothes and carpets upon it. 
You hear of that married woman's con- 
tinued flirtation with this man^ of this, 
that, and the other menage d trois ; you 
see, after you hear the stories, and know 
the names, these small insect-intrigues go- 
ing on under your nose. You say this is no 
microcosm of this teeming, virile, turbulent 
American life. Surely not ; it is merely the 
macrocosm of wealthy frivolity. 

Society, to be permanently interesting, 
must be made up of idle professionals, not 
of professional idlers. Pray, bear in mind 
that Newport is not what I have dubbed 
American society ; this is what the Ameri- 
cans themselves say is New York society's 
best dish, garnished with a little cold Bos- Sodety^s 
ton celery, and a fringe of Philadelphia and 
Baltimore parsley. 

In this connection, clearness demands 
that one should note the American use of 
the word ''society." According to the 
newspapers, practically every woman who 
attends a spelling-bee or who goes to the 
country for a short holiday in the summer 
is a " society leader." All the young men 
229 



man 



America and the Americans 

who die in this country are '' club-men," 
or ''great club-men," as the case may be. 
For a long time this puzzled me, till I dis- 
covered that the newspapers intended to 
flatter, and probably, also, the relicts of the 
aforesaid deceased young men were actually 
''Club' flattered, by this term, "club-man." In 
Europe, of course, every man of any posi- 
tion has his club as much as he has his 
watch or his collar ; and it would be as ab- 
surd to speak of a Paris dandy or of a Lon- 
don swell as a " club-man," as to speak of 
him as a man of trousers, or clean shirts, or 
polished boots. 
Society.'' Society, in Europe, has a certain re- 
stricted meaning which enables one to pict- 
ure to himself what "in society" means. 
It is not necessarily a brilliant distinction, 
but it is, at least, a sufficiently intelligi- 
ble definition. But here "society leader" 
and "club-man" may mean something or 
nothing, as the case may be. Here again 
democracy exaggerates the very sentiments 
and positions it is supposed to ignore. 

Every woman with two changes of head- 
gear is a "society woman," and every man 

230 



*' Society" 



with a top-hat and two pairs of trousers is 
a ** club-man." One hears, too, more 
talk about ''old families" here than any- 
where else ; why it is I know not, unless it 
be because they secretly feel that they are 
all so new. 

An old family means simply a family ''Oid 
whose members have been, in one capacity ^^"^^y' 
or another, noteworthy and valuable citi- 
zens for a century or two ; it means that, 
or merely that we are all equidistant from 
Adam, or, at various stages of develop- 
ment, from some anthropoid ape. In short 
it has a perfectly definite meaning, or it 
has none. 

The foreigner is at first bewildered by 
this ''society woman," "club-man," "old- 
family ' ' talk, and then amused by it. There 
are clubs, and very good clubs, here ; there 
is society, and very luxurious and bright 
society ; and there are some noteworthy 
citizens whose grandfathers were not 
hanged ; but there are seventy-five million 
people here also, and some few of them do 
not come under any of these three heads. 

When I went to Saratoga, and to Bar 



231 



America and the Americans 

Harbor, I kept hearing everywhere of *' so- 
ciety women," and ''club-men," and '* old 
families," but of society in the restricted 
and brilliant sense to which we confine 
the word I saw little outside of New York, 
Newport, and Washington. 
Saratoga. Saratoga is famous for its springs of 

mineral water, and for a certain kind of 
hotel-life during the summer, such as I 
have seen nowhere else in the world. 
Huge wooden structures, containing hun- 
dreds of rooms, are opened during eight 
or ten weeks in the summer, and there 
flock thither, to live like bees in a hive, 
some thousands of people with a certain 
amount of money to spend. They all eat 
together, dance together in the hotel par- 
lors in the evening, lounge together on 
the hotel piazzas during the day, walk to 
and from the springs together, and if one 
could see through the partitions between 
the rooms as well as one can hear through 
them, the absolute absence of all personal 
privacy would be attained at last, and the 
crowd-loving American might look for- 
ward to life hereafter in one of these 
232 



" Society 



Saratoga hotels. It is only, I suppose, a 
question of time when all partitions will 
be removed, and the acme of human pro- 
miscuity will be reached when rival hotel- 
keepers shall advertise '* no partitions ! " 

My stay in Saratoga was short. My 
friend drove me about one day, spent the 
night, and then was off to New York. I 
stayed out another day and night, and 
followed him to the comparative loneh- 
ness and privacy of the crowded city 
streets. If Daudet or an equally caustic 
wit had been with me here, no doubt he 
would have said that Saratoga explained to 
him the Destruction of Jerusalem, for the 
Jews are here in swarms. 

The negro servants were to me the most African 
interesting feature of the exhibit. To see 
one of these negro waiters in a white 
apron, a tin tray, covered with small 
bird-seed dishes, poised upon the upraised 
palm of his right hand, steering his way 
through the maze of chairs, tables, and 
other waiters down the long dining-room, 
was to see a rare sight. But to see the two 
or three upper-servants snapping their fin- 

233 



chiefs. 



America and the Americans 

gers or moving about pompously, like 
black kings in an animated wax - work 
show, was to see the vanity of the peacock 
surpassed, as is the timidity of the field- 
mouse by the glories of Solomon. I 
wonder that the phrase '' the glory of a 
negro head-waiter " has not become a cur- 
rent phrase in the American vocabulary. 

These black servants, and the dress and 
ornamentation of the women, made one 
feel as though one were wandering about 
in a mammoth aviary, peopled by birds 
of paradise attended by Africans. Women 
walk about the streets in the evening in 
evening dress and glittering with dia- 
monds, and at the dances in the evening 
unintroduced strangers ask ladies to dance 
with them. No doubt, morally, everything 
is right enough ; but this hap-hazard social 
life, even for a few weeks, must result in 
producing a dissipated habit of mind and 
a certain easy looseness of manners, which 
can hardly be good for either matrons or 
maids. 
The One often hears it said in America that 

iiuiUnT American husbands are the best husbands 

234 



'Society" 



in the world, and from the stand -point of 
women this is quite true. It is a question, 
however, that only another century of 
American social and domestic history can 
answer whether this feminine social and 
domestic supremacy produces the happiest 
results. No one will deny that now, in 
America, the comfort of the man is subor- 
dinated to that of the woman. 

Unlike most European countries, the 
men outnumber the women by something 
over a million and a half. This fact alone 
gives women a greater value here than 
elsewhere ; and when one is told that there 
are over two million widows, or one widow 
to every fifteen of the female population, 
this of itself possibly accounts for a certain 
topsy-turviness of the conjugal relation. 

What one would expect from this greater 
freedom and prominence of women holds 
good, for the divorces number seven pro- 
cured by women to five procured by men. 
That is to say, of the total male population, 
0.15 per cent, were divorced ; of the total 
female population, 0.24 per cent. Avere di- 
vorced. Now, if it be true, as the Ameri- 

235 



America and the Americans 

can women themselves affirm, that the 
American husband is the best husband in 
the world, then the above divorce statistics 
certainly go to prove that there is some- 
thing wrong with the domestic behavior of 
the American wife. 
Domestic I offcr no commcnt whatever as to that, 

impoSie. because I am, I know very well, prejudiced 
beyond possibility of fairness in my belief 
that the man should be master in his house, 
and that if he is not so considered, it is 
equally bad for the wife, the children, and 
the man himself. 

This hydra-headed monarchy that the 
Americans are pleased to call a democracy 
has not succeeded so well thus far that it is 
a wise move to make family rule hydra- 
headed as well — children, wife, and ser- 
vants — all with an equal voice in the man- 
agement, and each with a veto over his per- 
sonal '* wills" and ''wonts." 

My own ecclesiastical leanings make it 
difficult for me to approve of divorce, and 
yet I hope that I am fair enough to admit 
that in this country, where the ties of au- 
thority, either ecclesiastical or social, are so 
236 



''Society" 



newly knotted, it is not easy to damn any- 
thing off-hand. When, as has been the 
case, a high dignitary of the church pro- 
cures a divorce for his daughter, and men 
and women of undoubted decency of hfe 
procure divorces, one must know more 
than do I of such matters, to speak ex 
cathedra on the subject. 

One distinguished and affable judge, Anin- 
whom I met at dinner, told me that the fianation! 
American was naturally a domestic animal, 
and pointed to the large percentage of mar- 
ried people to substantiate his assertion, 
and followed this by saying that a large 
percentage of the divorces, he believed, 
resulted in a more stable and peaceful 
domestic life thereafter. He believed in 
permitting no chicanery in the divorce 
courts, but in permitting divorce for adul- 
tery, for wilful desertion, and certain other 
offences. 



237 




XVIII 

Summer Resorts 

|N most civilized countries, it has 

been well said, '■^Les homtnes 

font les lois, lesfemmes font les 

mcEiu's. ' ' After a round of New 

port, Saratoga, and Bar Harbor, one begins 

to question the truth of this epigram as ap- 

Anin- plied to American laws and manners. If 

%igra7n! my observations are of any worth, the 

above statement is not altogether true here, 

where the women make the laws, and the 

men put up with the manners of the women. 

Laws and manners, both, are made at 

Bar Harbor, at any rate, for youngish men 

by young girls. 

Picture to yourself a rocky island off the 
coast of Northeastern America; build for 
yourself upon it innumerable chateaux, 
small and large, of fantastic architecture, 
pour down sunshine upon it, and people it 
with hundreds of young people in bright- 

238 



Summer Resorts 



colored summer costumes, and permit these 
vivacious youths to take all sorts of liber- 
ties with liberty, «f/ voi/d Bar Harbor. 

The island was at first an outing-place for 
New Englanders ; it became famous for its 
unconventional ''good times," as they say 
here, and now it swarms with people from 
all parts of the States. Land sells for fabu- 
lous sums, the more fashionable world pours 
in, and dinners, and dances, luncheons, 
and picnics fill up the days and nights 
much as at Newport. The class of people 
here is distinctly different from that at Sara- 
toga, but the ever-present American mix- 
ing process goes on here, only in a different 
guise — here it is al fresco. Young men informal- 



and women are off together alone in canoes 



ity of inters 



gcLiicj. aiuiic 111 v-ainjca course. 

and sail-boats on the water, and in buck- 
boards and ' ' buggies ' ' on the land. Women 
organize entertainments, invite the guests, 
and generally reign supreme. 

One of the strangest political phenomena 
to me is the ceaseless agitation for women's 
rights here. Rights ! Moti Dieu ! they 
have rights, privileges, autocracy now in this 
country ; pray, what more can they want ? 

239 



America and the Americans 

I go to a luncheon, and thereafter I am 
escorted to a canoe by a maiden of twenty - 
odd summers, who keeps me out on the 
water with her till eight o'clock, laughs 
merrily when, in trepidation, I wonder 
what excuses I am to make to my dinner- 
hostess that evening. ''Oh, tell her you 
were with me ! " 

I dine at the chateau of a Chicago lady, 
whose husband is not in evidence. He is 
deplorably vulgar, they tell me ; but the 
wife is an energetic leader socially, and in 
Claudius? Other ways — Ubi Claudius ibi Claudia is 
the usual form, is it not? But here ubi 
Claudia and Claudius nowhere, seems to be 
the rule. In Europe the wife takes the so- 
cial position of her husband, but here, God 
bless you ! the husband merely fits in to the 
social exigencies of his wife as best he can. 

I am having, as these young Americans 
say, ''a simply lovely time," but, to be 
honest with you, I do not half like this new 
basis of social life. I do not see that it 
leads to anything strong, and true, and 
vigorous in the national life. 

Among the lower animals the lion has 

240 



Summer Resorts 



the mane, and the lioness is less noticeable 
than he ; the male pheasant carries the 
gorgeous plumage, and his mate looks som- 
bre beside him ; the male Indian, both in a newdis^ 

pensatiottt 

the East and West, wears the jewels and 
the gorgeous robes and blankets ; but in 
this last type of civilization the females 
strut and preen themselves in iridescent 
colors and in costly finery, and the male 
limps sedately behind her. The women 
drive, the women paddle and row and 
sail, the women invite you, the women 
entertain you. These women are never 
crossed, never made to obey, except when 
they have daughters of eighteen and over, 
and then these overwise young misses 
make a league with the down-trodden fa- 
ther, and the mother goes to the wall. 

I hope that I am not exaggerating. I 
speak only of what I see with my own eyes. 
I give only the preponderating colors of 
the scene. There are exceptions. Pray, 
think not that I am such a prig as to give 
these fleeting glances as profound observa- 
tions, as data not to be denied or modified. 
In spite of all that I write, it is only here, 

241 



America and the Americans 

not in prudish England, not in lethargic 
Germany, not in decorous and sleepy Hol- 
land, that I learned the falsity of my coun- 
tryman's cynical dictum : '' // est de bons 
7nariages ; il n^ en est pas de delicieuxy 

I have seen in various parts of the world 
married people who respected one another, 
married people who loved one another, but 
A big word here I have met at least a dozen married 
people of some years' standing who actually 
enjoy one another. After all that I have 
said which would seem to contradict this, 
I can only explain these manages delicieux 
by referring them to the large category of 
bewildering surprises which this land sup- 
plies to the studious spectator. 

It ought to be the case, that this untram- 
melled freedom of married and unmarried 
women should produce a good fellowship 
not to be found in countries where women 
are more carefully guarded ; and where the 
women are of the best type here, this turns 
out to be the case. For most women the 
system is bad, but for a picked few it re- 
sults in the happiest domestic establish- 
ments in the world. 

242 



Summer Resorts 



Nothing is more productive of slavery 
than the gift of liberty. To give a man or 
woman liberty that he or she has not 
earned is merely to put him or her in 
worse bondage than before. One sees this 
here in the case of the negroes, in the case Fatal 
of the Irish politicians, in the case of the ^ ^^^' 
socialistic and anarchistic immigrants, who, 
severally and together, take the most im- 
pertinent liberties with liberty. I beg 
pardon in advance, but I permit myself to 
say that this applies as well to many of 
the women, and to almost all the children. 

One cannot conceive of an English Bar 
Harbor, of a French Saratoga, of an Aus- 
trian Manhattan Beach. People are not 
deemed fit for such freedom in those coun- 
tries ; and taking the results all together, 
massing them, so to phrase it, and leav- 
ing out the dehcious exceptions, I doubt 
whether the Americans are worthy of such 
freedom. I saw at Saratoga and at Bar 
Harbor various things that led me to be- 
lieve that many men and women overlook 
the difference between liberty and liberties. 
A slave to whom a crown is given, all too 

243 



America and the Americans 

often becomes a tyrant. Let the baby do 
as it pleases for a week, and see the natural 
instincts of humanity to wear the crown 
and wield the sceptre of an autocrat, crop 
out. 

This is the land of spoiled children, and 
had I not come to know well here some 
such splendid types of what a woman 
should be, I should add, of spoiled women, 
as well. Perhaps it is true that the best 
types of men and women are more quick- 
ly developed and improved by those rarest 
gifts — wealth, power, liberty. These 
A danger things are good for the best, but they are 
TortuZiiy. certainly bad for the average run of people, 
and an impartial view of this civilization 
proves the truth of this. Certainly, had 
I a young wife and daughters, I should 
not turn them out for the summer at Sa- 
ratoga or Bar Harbor — unless I were an 
American husband, in which case I should 
do as I was bid and pay the bills ! 

It must not be supposed, from this social 

and domestic prominence of the women 

here, that the men are a supine lot. They 

are subordinate to their women, but not 

244 



Summer Resorts 



easily bullied by other men. They are 
not effeminate ; it is simply the habit of 
the country. As in the far West, the In- 
dian warrior of undoubted bravery, whose 
tepee is hung with scalps, may be beaten 
by his favorite squaw without loss of dig- 
nity or impeachment of his courage ; so 
here, among the more civilized pale-faces, 
the men make no point of ruHng in matters 
domestic. 

Whoever has seen Hyde Park of a Sun- 
day morning after church, or watched the 
crowds on their way to the races in Paris 
of a Sunday afternoon, knows without the 
telling that the men are as much aiix petits Dress 0/ the 
soins about their toilet as the women. It 
is not so here. In New York, at Newport, 
in Washington, one meets many men who 
are always carefully groomed. But the 
average male American is almost sloven- 
ly in his dress, and the farther West you 
go the more this is apparent. A man, in 
many parts of the country, who is punc- 
tilious in his dress is looked at rather 
askance as one who devotes too much time 
and thought to the rather feminine details 

245 



men. 



America and the Americans 

of existence. This is carried to such an 
extent that many gentlemen even do not 
look fresh and neat. 

In some parts of the country men pan- 
der to this for political effect, and wear 
shabby clothes, hats, and boots, and no 
neck-cloth — sometimes no collar — in the 
belief that this slovenliness endears them 
to the vote-holding masses. Many mem- 
bers of Congress have no evening clothes, 
and deem it foppery to wear such. One 
federal Senator was said never to wear 
Politics and socks ; another always wore a paper collar, 
nee wear, f^g^gj^g^j ^^ ^j^g throat by a diamond button, 
but no neck-cloth ; and I could cite many 
more examples of similar savagery. Much 
of that, of course, is hypocrisy ptir et smpky 
mere ochlocraticism. 

In the case of the many carelessly dressed 
men in both the East and West, the matter 
is explained by the very high price of 
clothes when made by a tailor, and not 
bought ready-made, and to the fact that 
the servants are not trained here to look 
after one's wardrobe. In theory, this 
sounis all very democratic, to be one's 
246 



Summer Resorts 



own valet, to look after one's own clothes 
and boots. I stayed in one house in 
Chicago, by the way, where a small box 
was pointed out to me as containing black- 
ing and brushes, and with my own right 
hand, did I burnish up my boots — but as 
a matter of fact it is neither democratic 
nor economical. Subdivision and syste- 
matization of labor is the only true democ- 
ratic, the only true economic, way. 

At a club in Chicago, chatting of Ameri- 
can affairs with an entertaining American, 
I broached the subject of prices. Like most 
Americans he launched out into a descrip- 
tion of his own affairs. The suit of clothes 
he had on cost, he said, two hundred and 
seventy - five francs. He calculated that 
he spent about nineteen hundred francs a 
year just for coats, trousers, and waistcoats. 
His tailor, he said, would not make him an a Chicago 
evening suit for less than four hundred and 
fifty francs. 

It was in the morning that we were 

chatting, and I was wearing a suit that I 

had had three years, and which cost ine 

originally eighty-five francs. But then 

247 



tailor. 



America and the Americans 

good Francois keeps my clothes and boots 
as I keep my guns. Things for the differ- 
ent seasons are put away, and brought out 
again, and though I have probably five 
suits of clothes to that young gentleman's 
one, my clothes and Francois's wages added 
do not cost me per annum anything hke 
the amount he spends for his. 

For a young man to have a man-servant 
in this country is to be marked out as pe- 
culiarly foppish, as rather silly, as some- 
what effeminate. But fancy the lost time, 
the lost energy, the worry of a really busy 
man who should attempt to be his own 
bootblack, to fold and brush and look after 
his own clothes, and calculate how much 
money he must waste through the lack of 
care bestowed on these things. 

Personally I can see nothing derogatory 
Personal to onc's character in being another man's 
servant, if the other man is a good fellow. 
I supposed that in a democracy, at any 
rate, service was the only genuine badge 
of nobility. I should have enjoyed being 
valet to Alexander the Great, or Louis 
Quatorze, or groom of the chambers to 
248 



service. 



Summer Resorts 



Lorenzo the Magnificent, or secretary to 
Talleyrand or Moliere. What more inter- 
esting task than to serve a man who is Effetephu- 
playing a worthy part in the affairs of life? '"''^^''^' 
If one cannot do great things one's self, 
what can be nearer to it than to help take 
care of the man who can ? 

It is this absurd and wholly undemo- 
cratic feeling about service in America 
which makes all the details of domestic 
and social, and even commercial and polit- 
ical life, so rough and hard and tiresome. 
It is one thing to be a slave, quite another 
to be a servant. In every civilized State 
the servants of God are given precedence, 
and, pray, who should come next in a Chris- 
tian democracy, if not the servants of man, 
and then the servants of men ? 

The savage kills his own game, makes 
his own blanket, and bows, and arrows, 
and tent, each for himself. The civilized Eiemen- 
man has found it more simple to apportion %^iticai 
to each a task, and thus leave each one free ^^''«'"«^- 
to devote his whole time to the doing of one 
thing well. In this way Hfe is made more 
simple, less complex, and, in the true sense, 
249 



America and the Americans 

more democratic. Who would counsel re- 
verting to the system of each man his own 
cook, his own policeman, his own builder, 
his own tailor, his own shoemaker ? 

" There is no office in this needful world 
But dignifies the doer, if done well," 

writes Fortunatus the Pessimist. 

These Americans handicap themselves 
^ heavily by this semi-savage idea of theirs 
about service. Given six men, one who 
kills, one who cooks, one who builds, one 
who farms, one who makes clothes, one who 
makes shoes ; and on the other hand six 
communities of one man each, where each 
one attempts to do all these duties himself, 
and who doubts which of these seven com- 
munities will be most prosperous and most 
powerful at the end of a year ? 

A statesman who looks upon statecraft 
The as a serious business, and we Frenchmen 

practical , , . . . , . 

side of it. know whether it is a serious business or 
not, has no time to chop up his own fire- 
wood, and to sew buttons on his own shirt, 
and to black his own boots. In many 
matters American men have kept pace with 
250 



Slimmer Resorts 



the marvellous material progress of their 
own country, but in this matter of the sys- 
tematization of the minor details of life 
they are leagues behind us, leagues behind 
Germany and England — formidable com- 
mercial competitors of theirs — leagues be- 
hind Japan; even. 

They are far too self-confident to take any 
warning now. They deem these, matters 
that will right themselves, or problems that 
they will solve by machinery. But India, 
Russia, and South America grow wheat 
now, and borrow the best American ma- 
chines for their labor ! 

Democracies have usually failed because Weakness 
they would not give their best men a chance, ^des^^^^^^' 
because they would not put confidence in 
natural leaders. Nothing the people dis- 
trust so much as the people. America 
has this lesson to learn. Another hundred 
years and they will be put to it here, despite 
their great natural advantages, to keep their 
place among the great nations. Only 
men, strong men, trained men, trusted men, 
can fight their battle for them. Machines 
will not do it. Luck will not do it. Only 



America and the Americans 

trained men served by trained servants will 
do it. 

But allons done ! I am preaching, nous 
verrons ce que nous verrons I But I like these 
brave people too much not to be serious in 
my discussion of their affairs from time to 
time. I fear that perhaps Bar Harbor and 
Saratoga and Newport made me feel a lit- 
tle school - mastery toward them, made me 
think they were not studious enough. I 
may be mistaken. There may be other 
Apossi- surprises in store for me. Perhaps some 
American even now has an invention up 
his sleeve by means of which a man may 
carry a machine in his watch-case which 
will valet him and secretary him, and board 
and lodge him, all by touching a spring. 



bility. 



252 




XIX 

Impressions of Chicago 

HAD about finished putting 
my journal in order to send it 
to my friend in New York, 
when I received, forwarded by 
him to my address, an extraordinary letter 
from Chicago. 

The letter ran about as follows : ''My 
dear Monsieur X. : You will remember that ACjI^a^, 
we met in Chicago. My friend Y. , of New 
York, tells me that you have consented to 
put some of your notes, taken while in 
America, in his hands for printing. If 
you say anything about the Windy City, 
you might mention my name, as you fel- 
lows say, just e?i passant ! ' ' Then there 
were several pages of personal flattery, and 
an offer to send me any facts I might want 
concerning the writer himself in particular, 
and about society in general in Chicago. 
This young gentleman surely deserves that 

253 



America and the Americans 

I give his name here, but too many Ameri- 
cans have been kind to me to permit of 
my indulging malice toward even one of 
them knowingly. 

I had not intended to describe Chicago, or 
Detroit, or Kansas City at any great length, 
though I paid short visits to all three. A 
casual tour about Chicago, with a Chi- 
cago gentleman and his wife, left a vague 
impression of slaughter - houses, cemete- 
ries, parks, and lake-front. I was much im- 
pressed, too, by the strange combination of 

Plato, Pork and Plato there. My hostess attended 

twice a week a Plato club, and the winter be- 
fore, so she told me, she had attended a sim- 
ilar class in Browning. Her husband, on 
the other hand, took me to see, as possibly 
the most interesting sight in the city, the 

Pork* slaughter-houses and stock-yards. I wit- 

nessed a procession of pigs becoming sau- 
sages at the rate of I have forgotten how 
many a minute. He laughed at her Plato, 
she laughed at his pigs. It seemed to me 
that the one was taken no more seriously 
than the other. 

One-fifth of the total population of lUi- 

254 



Impressions of Chicago 



nois is made up of Germans and Irish, and 
in Chicago itself more than two-thirds of 
the population is foreign -born. This state 
of things would seem to offer ample food 
for study and reflection to the more serious- 
minded citizens. 

With a self- proclaimed anarchist as Gov- 
ernor of their State, and riots in Chicago 
only lately that required the federal troops 
to suppress them, one would imagine that 
the study of Plato and Browning, and the 
net-work of clubs for which the city is 
notorious, for investigating kindergarten 
methods, for promoting the rights of wom- 
en, for the study of pre-Raphaelite art, for 
the study of the history of Fiction, for col- 
lecting funds for excavations in Greece, for 
the study of the pre- Shakespearian drama- 
tists, and many more topics equally unre- 
lated to the real problems of the city, were 
not to the point. 

Be it said, to my shame, that never be- if Plato 

r T IT T • 1 came to 

fore at a dinner have I conversed with a Chicago! 
lady on the subject of Plato. I believe 
Plato kept but a meagre place in his re- 
public for women. It would, no doubt, 

255 



America and the Americans 

surprise him, as much as it surprised me, to 
visit this city, the name of which hitherto 
had been made famihar to me by seeing it 
on tins of meat, to find himself served up 
with the soup at his first dinner-party. 

One charm, at least, about the intel- 
lectual life in America is its unexpected- 
ness. People here in Chicago are not 
trammelled by centuries of training and 
precedent. We Europeans begin with the 
alphabet, go on to simple words of one 
syllable, then on from primer to reader, 
and begin our national classics with La 
Fontaine, and so on through a regularly 
graded intellectual training, step by step. 
But here in Chicago a lady, who talked 
glibly of Plato, surprised me by saying 
that she did not know an English poet 
named Peacock, and thought I was jok- 
ing when I told her that his full name was 
Thomas Love Peacock. 
A prophet The only sustained bit of English prose 

not without , , r r^y ' 1 

honour. that has come out of Chicago, so my novel- 
ist friend told me, is a little book, half fic- 
tion, half reminiscence, of Italian life. I 
asked this same lady, therefore, if she had 
256 



Impressions of Chicago 



read ''The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani," 
and she had never heard of the book. Here 
is another illustration — alas ! that there are 
so many — of the superficial, short-and-easy 
methods here. Culture ! Yes, culture is 
the word they use. 

I know men and women in France, in 
Russia, in Italy, who speak and read half a 
dozen languages, who have travelled over 
all Europe and much of the East, who 
know and have learned much from distin- Culture 
guished people all over the world, who 'cuHure. 
have gone through the hard continental 
school and university training, and who do 
not dream that anyone thinks them men 
and women of pre-eminent culture. 

But here, God bless you ! these women 
who only just know how to write their 
notes of invitation and their letters prop- 
erly, talk of culture ! It reminds me ot 
Boston, of Concord again, and of Plym- 
outh, where, as here, the side-issues of life, 
the fringe, the beads, the ornaments of the 
intellectual hfe are worn tricked out on the 
cheap and shabby stuff of an utterly in- 
adequate preliminary mental drill. 

257 



America and the Americans 

One young man I met here, a professor 
in the university, who turned out to be a 
One scholar distinguished Greek scholar and the editor 
of an erudite book on the American Con- 
stitution. I confided to him my impres- 
sions of the superficiaHty of much of this 
learning and reading and studying by short- 
and - easy methods, but he was too much 
the gentle scholar himself to chide others, 
though I learnt later that he has written 
of this flimsy pretentiousness of the intel- 
lectual life in unmeasured terms. All this 
study and reading are not bad ; it is the 
choice of subjects and the assumption that 
when one has a httle superficial knowledge 
of the great classics, one is therefore an 
equal of those who have endured the dril' 
and training of years of academic life, which 
is mischievous. 

These are a young people in a hurry 
and they often mistake haste for swiftness. 
There is an intellectual ocean of difference 
between knowing things, and knowing 
about them. The chief value of knowledge 
is the training gained in its pursuit. The 
Chicago method consists in a kind of con- 

258 



Impressions of Chicago 



SOW'S ear. 



viction of knowledge, akin to the mys- 
tic's conviction of righteousness, or the 
Calvinist's conviction of sin, and they 
are all three equally hai-mless and equally 
useless. 

Chicago is the metropolis of the great 
middle West, an enormous territory of 
vast promise, and is now a city of a 
million inhabitants. As a witty gentle- 
man in New York said to me, they have Purseand 
municipalized the prairies. It is a rough 
and raw civilization, and it is a fatal blun- 
der to attempt to put fine French fur- 
niture-polish on rough boards before they 
have been planed and smoothed to receive 
it. 

It is said by anthropological students 
who have investigated the subject that 
certain barbarous races are weakened and 
finally exterminated by civilization. It is 
said, too, that minds accustomed to train- 
ing and to study can bear training as minds 
of less cultured ancestry cannot. Some- 
times I think that the enormous increase of 
wealth, of opportunity, of luxury, in such 
a community, say, as Chicago, have for the 

259 



America and the Americans 

moment weakened that fortunate growth 
of the men and women to whom they have 
come in the largest proportion. 

For reasons unnecessary to mention 
here, I was obHged to spend a day and two 
nights some hundreds of miles from Chi- 
cago, in a rough little village. I met there 
the genuine unwashed, unabashed, un- 
The un- affected American in all his glory. At a 
American. Certain so-callcd '' groccry-storc," whithcr 
I went in the evening to find a notary, I 
spent some two hours. During those two 
hours I heard some of the shrewdest talk 
I had heard during my entire stay in 
America. 

These were types of what the politicians 
call " the plain people." I began to think 
that the politicians were right. I forgot 
Newport, I forgot Semitic Saratoga, I for- 
A ray of got Miss U. S. Liberty, embarrassing the 
finical foreigner at Bar Harbor, and I 
began to see the real backbone of this 
strange American life. I felt quite sure, 
when I left that expectorating group of 
natives sitting about the stove in that gro- 
cery-store, that no politician, no theorist, 
260 



hope. 



Impressions of Chicago 



no socialist, would deceive those men for 
any great length of time. 

I had a similar experience, that I have 
not noted here, both in Salem and in 
New Bedford, towns in Massachusetts, and 
I remember now that I was much im- 
pressed then with the same shrewdness, 
and the same rugged integrity of manner 
and speech there. 

Such men as these are much superior to 
relatively the same class in France, in Eng- 
land, or in Italy. So far as education is Rough 
concerned, their speech and their allusions 
showed that they had little academic train- 
ing ; but they thought for themselves, and, 
what is better and more profitable, acted 
for themselves, and this had evidently given 
them an independence and sturdiness that 
will not be easily shaken. 

I did my business in one case with a 
man who handled his pen much as a wom- 
an handles a gun, but who needed no law- 
yer at his side to protect him. He knew 
all about his own business, and a good 
deal besides, which it had been well for me 
had I known, too. 

261 



America and the Americans 

They tell me that the West is peopled 
with just such men — that the same is true 
Thepiain of New England and the Middle States. 
They give little heed to passing discussions 
and fleeting theories, but when the real 
rub comes they appear at the front in start- 
ling numbers, with muskets or votes, as 
occasion requires. I by no means wish to 
imply that they are always right, but they 
are always in earnest ; and when one has 
devoted much of his time to the gayer side 
of American life, this background of ear- 
nestness appeals to one as all the more im- 
portant, and as a factor in this nation not 
to be overlooked. 

If I were pioneering a party of foreign 
capitalists through this country, hoping to 
persuade them to leave their money here, I 
might take them to Newport, and perhaps 
to Boston, just to hear English properly 
spoken ; but I should certainly take them 
to the seaboard towns of Massachusetts and 
Maine, and to the rough villages of the 
Western States, to let them see the real 
quality of the great bulk of the American 
people. 

262 



impressions of Chicago 



As for me, when I returned to Chicago 
from my visit to the prairies, it seemed to 
me that there was more chance for Chicago Hope /or 
than I had thought, when I first saw that ^''''''^''• 
in this sociaUstic foreign population many 
of the people I met were pretending to be 
serious about Browning, Plato, and the 
pre-Raphaelite poets. 

Somehow dilettanteism in Chicago seems 
out of place. It is a little too much as 
though the coachman should turn round 
on the box to tell you what Ruskin says 
about sunsets, or the laundress turn from 
the tub to chat about the chemistry of soap- 
bubbles. Not that a coachman may not 
enjoy a sunset, and a laundress wonder 
about the iridescence of a soap-bubble, but 
for the time being their thoughts should be 
of other things. 

Pork, not Plato, has made Chicago, and 
Chicago people have not arrived at a stage 
of civilization yet where they can with 
propriety or advantage change their alle- 
giance. 

One other feature of American life at- 
tracted my attention first in Chicago, 
263 



America and the Americans 

though I found that it was common in the 
clubs in all parts of America. 

We were sitting, some half a dozen of 
us, in the club, when another member 
appeared on the scene. He called a ser- 
Amiabiiity vant, Said to him, *' Take the orders ! " and 
potability, then turning to us all, said : "What' 11 ye 
have, gentlemen ? " Thus this young man 
had his one drink, with his bill multiplied 
by six or seven. This practice is almost 
universal. It is done in New York as it 
is done here, and at Kansas City, and 
everywhere else I have been. * ' Take the 
orders ! " and '' What' 11 ye have? " might 
well be emblazoned on the club-crests like 
' '■ Ich die?i, " or ' ' Non sa?is droict. ' ' They 
illustrate the hospitable tendency of the 
people, and the everywhere-prevailing dis- 
like of solitariness. 

It is of no consequence on these oc- 
casions that the inviter is not acquainted 
with the invitees. He includes them all 
in his generous embrace. He invites you 
to partake of potables first, and makes your 
acquaintance afterward. This custom leads 
to an unnecessary multiplication of pota- 

264 



Impressions of Chicago 



tions, perhaps, but is an easy and gracious 
way of introducing one's self, or of re-intro- 
ducing one's self to new-found company. 

This cheerful, all-embracing '-What' 11 
ye have?" sounds in my ears now, when 
I am so many thousand miles away, and I 
smile involuntarily as I think of the hap- 
py-go-lucky, prosperous, and genial young 
heirs of a mighty nation's wealth, to all of 
whom I would gladly say, as so many of 
them have said to me : " What' 11 ye have ? ' * 

I did not get as far as the Pacific coast, 
and my journeys in this Western country 
were hastened by an unexpected order to 
return to Paris. But 1 am not sure that 
the communities in America with the least 
assumption of polish are not, after all, the 
most interesting, at any rate, to the Euro- 
pean. There is a great difference between 
newness and freshness. The East seems a Newness 
bit new, but the West is still fresh. The Tess. 
one has the awkwardness of the novus homo, 
the other the awkwardness of a sturdy but 
growing school-boy. The mistakes of the 
West are blunders of exuberance, the mis- 
takes of the East are the blunders of self- 
265 



America and the Americans 

repression. The one does not care at all, 
the other cares too much. 

The Western cow-boy and the Western 
farmer seemed to me to be rather more 
genuine, as articles of American manufact- 
ure, than the haw -hawing Bostonian, or 
the New Yorker with his men-servc.nts in 
knee-breeches. But here again I beg to 
apologize for generalizations. I know too 
many dandies whose minds and muscles 
are not what their neck-cloths and boots 
and gloves would seem to proclaim, to 
The cow- make off-hand comparisons between the 
^andfhe '' cow-punchcr " and the '* dude," as they 
call them here. 

During the late war between the North 
and the South, they tell me, the colleges 
sent as fair a proportion of good fighters as 
the lumber-camps ; and the shops of New 
York and Boston as worthy representatives 
as the farms and the prairies. I am writing 
you of what I saw, of my personal impres- 
sions. An instantaneous photograph of a 
nation is no more a history or a prophecy 
than the photograph of an individual is an 
analysis of his character. 
266 



dude. 




XX 

American Newspapers 

50 a greater extent than in any 
other country^ the newspapers 
of America are read and talked 
about. Some of the most en- 
tertaining Americans one meets, or hears 
of, are journahsts. It would be impossi- 
ble to leave the country, after studying its 
journals as have I, without a few words 
concerning them. 

One hears so much, and so often, of 
what education has done, and will do, for 
the masses in America, that one comes at 
last to ask himself, in just what, then, is 
this so-often-vaunted education to consist ? 
First of all, the Americans refer you to their 
public schools. But even the best schools 
do not give a man an education, much less 
can these schools do so. Experience, read- 
ing, travel, intercourse with other men, and 
267 



America and the Americans 



Newspaper 
education. 



A French 
newspaper. 



daily employment of one's faculties, these 
are what educate a man, after the schools 
have given him the more mechanical in- 
struments of education. 

The Americans are such voracious 
readers of their own newspapers, that the 
newspapers must be taken into account as 
an important — not to say the chief — factor 
in what may be termed the secondary 
education of the mass of the people. 

Last year 340,000 immigrants arrived in 
America ; 270,000 of them were over four- 
teen years of age, and of these last, 78,000 
could neither read nor write. The first 
printed matter that these people will read, 
when they can read at all, will be the 
newspapers. What they, and many, very 
many, other Americans read almost exclu- 
sively are the newspapers. 

To a republican like me, interested to 
see what this greatest of republics is to 
become, the newspapers were a constant 
source of study, and, I may add, of amaze- 
ment. A newspaper to a Frenchman is, 
first of all, a Hterary production, well- 
planned and properly balanced, and with 
268 



American Newspapers 



newspaper. 



that as an instrument, it gives the news, 
and comments thereon. 

Many American newspapers have no 
such aim. Most of them read as though 
they had no editor, and were the result of 
shovelhng contributions into a hat, with- 
out a head in it, to be taken out and 
printed in such order and sequence as 
chance may dictate. There are, of course, 
exceptions to this. One prominent daily a firstrate 
newspaper, published every morning in 
New York, which shall be nameless, is 
edited, edited in fact better than any other 
sheet of the kind in the country, and as 
one glances over it, the logical mind is 
satisfied with its evident sense of propor- 
tion, and its terse expressions and clear Eng- 
lish. Whether one admires its tone always 
or not, there is daily evidence that there 
are brains in the editorial rooms, while many 
other newspapers give evidence only of a 
plentiful supply of mud in those quarters. 

It would be a colossal task to enumerate 

and to criticise, with any care, even the 

leading American newspapers. Instead of 

that, and out of regard to the dangers of 

269 



America and the Americans 

prejudice and partiality, I have chosen 
eight newspapers from different parts of 
the country, and carefully summarized their 
contents. 

The majority of these newspapers have 
from six to eight columns on a page, and 
the columns are from seventeen to twenty- 
one inches in length. A newspaper with 
twelve pages of seven columns each, and 
each column twenty inches in length, would 
have about i,68o inches of printed matter. 
With a measuring-tape I mapped out these 
eight newspapers, with the results as shown 
A synopsis, in the table. The synopsis of the matter 
is, of necessity, very general, and no doubt 
here and there mistakes were made in 
putting such and such matter under this 
or the other heading. Wherever there 
was any doubt in my own mind as to 
whether a topic came under the head of 
news or gossip, to the newspaper was given 
the benefit of the doubt, so that if there are 
errors they are in favor of the newspaper. 
In choosing the three New York papers for 
this table I was guided by an eminent law- 
yer of New York, who gave me what he 
270 






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271 



America and the Americans 

considered one good, one bad, and one in- 
different, example, my own choice being 
subordinated to his. In adding the Paris 
Figaro to the Hst, I offer a comparison of 
orderHness, economy, and succinctness, as 
we know them in France. 

A Parisian Hkes his newspaper to read it- 
self as he turns its pages ; the American is 
willing to delve, and seek, and flounder, in 
order to get the little that one really cares 
to know from day to day. The news- 
paper is primarily to make and to keep a 
man at home in the world, with as little cost 
of time and labor, as may be, to himself. 

The average American newspaper has no 
such aim in view. It flounders about in 
Lack of crime, gossip, accidents, sensations, per- 
sonalities, fiction, pictures, and news, ap- 
parently unable to decide just what it wants 
to do. One of the eight newspapers, on 
the particular day on which I tabulated its 
contents for this purpose, devoted almost 
one-twelfth of its total contents to the 
weather ; another gave considerably more 
than one-half of its total contents to crime, 
advertisements, sport, and personal gossip ; 
272 



precision. 



American Newspapers 



another gave one-half of its columns to ad- 
vertisements ; another was all too evidently 
wavering between the sensationalism of one 
extreme, and the decency and orderliness of 
its evening contemporary in the same city. 
In all but one of them, practically every- 
thing was padded to a grotesque extent, Padding^, 
with the evident intention of giving their 
readers the impression of a wealth of news 
for their money. 

The newspapers included in this table 
were chosen quite at random so far as date 
is concerned, and no attempt was made 
to point a moral or to adorn a tale, by 
choosing an issue of any one of them which 
should illustrate any particular point. There 
they are, just as they might appear on any 
given day to a stranger looking them over 
at an hotel or a club. 

The first thing one notices about them 
is their utter disregard of proportion as 
compared with the Figaro, for example. 
It is surely impossible that on any given 
day in New York, accidents, crime, fire, 
and business failures should be, omitting 
the advertisements, one-third of all the 

273 



America and the Americans 

news and comment, as appeared to be the 
case according to one of these newspapers ; 
or that the weather could possibly offer such 
a fund for comment as to swallow up one 
twentieth of a large morning paper; or 
that society in Chicago should suddenly be- 
come, in point of interest, one-twentieth of 
all the known world reached by telegraph. 

Were I to make these statements off 
book, the critic would appear, as is so often 
the case, with his '' foreign exaggeration," 
''absurd generalizations from rare inci- 
dents," and so on, but, fortunately, the 
table is here, and from it each one may de- 
duce his own conclusions. My own con- 
clusion is that unless one happens upon 
such newspapers as the Post, the Sun, the 
Tribune, in New York, for example, he 
would be led to believe that the population 
consisted of thugs, fire-bugs, and bankrupts, 
who, for some unaccountable reason, spent 
large sums on advertising. 

Here again we touch upon that peculiar 

A saHent American trait of itching to be busy, 

coupled with a disinclination to think 

hard about anything. Far too much is 

274 



trait. 



American Newspapers 



done, far too little is thought out. The 
newspapers mirror accurately enough, most 
of them, this state of mind. One can al- 
most see the editor of one of these news- 
papers ^' fearfully busy," with no time to 
think — the last thing he cares to do, or is 
capable of doing probably — surrounded by 
telephones, type-writers, office-bells, and 
stenographers, fearful lest a rival should 
get a murder, a fire, a prize-fight, or a 
personal scandal that he wants ; padding 
news that he promptly contradicts the ''Being 
next day, and pouring forth irrelevant, again. 
inaccurate, and unwholesome printed mat- 
ter upon a constituency of readers whom 
he has taught to be sceptical, frivolous, and 
eager for another sensation. Ruin stares 
him in the face if his readers are allowed 
to think or to study, and he does every- 
thing in his power to so occupy their 
minds that they may do neither. 

It is sometimes said, by the ignorant, that 
the Catholic Church aims to keep its peo- 
ple in ignorance that thus they may be the 
more readily ruled. This is certainly and 
obviously true of certain newspapers of 

275 



America and the Americans 

large circulation in America. Their pub- 
lic must necessarily be people of un- 
trained minds, and thus they are doing 
an awful injury to the State in retarding 
the development of that only possible 
safeguard of a republic — an educated suf- 
frage. 

It would be as impossible to a university- 
trained man to read continuously certain 
of these newspapers, as to interest himself 
at leisure moments, with his baby's blocks 
or nursery rhymes. And yet to a large 
extent the better class of people must help 
to support these newspapers, since, as a 
rule, they are the moneyed class. They 
Who buys advertise in them, and to some extent sub- 
scribe for them ; for the mere buying of a 
newspaper for a penny, by even an enor- 
mous number of people, will not make its 
proprietors very rich. 

I would not dare, as an outsider, to set 
down here the contemptuous things that 
are said about the worst of these news- 
papers and their proprietors by practically 
every respectable American one meets. But 
good -humor and carelessness prevail in the 
276 



them. 



American Newspapers 



end, and no one cares to take the step be- 
yond denunciation. 

Trained, travelled, and capable men are 
not so numerous in America as in France, 
England, and Germany. Those who have 
these qualifications are either making 
money in other affairs, or they are — a 
small number of them— idlers, what the 
newspapers call "club-men!" It was 
well known in Europe that Lord Salisbury, 
now England's Prime Minister, contribu- 
ted regularly in years gone by to the Sat- 
urday Review^ anonymously of course. 
Should he have presented himself to an 
American editor as a candidate for his 
staff, not one in ten of them would have An editor's 
known enough to make any use of him, ^^'^^' 
unless it were to advertise the fact that 
*' Salisbury now hangs up his coronet and 
his peer's robes on the back of our office- 
door ! ' ' Many of these Fire-Failure-Prize- 
fight newspapers do not want, and have 
no place for, such articles as the man who 
was to become England's Prime Minister 
could write. They do not want men who 
can stop and think, they want men who 

277 



America and the Americans 

can run and jump ; and the dirtier the pud- 
dle they land in, the better. 

Such a man as M. de Pressense, or such 
an one as Sir Charles Dilke, one of the 
greatest living authorities on extra-Eng- 
land subjects, might wait in vain for a place 
on the staff of an American newspaper. 
The American editor wants something that 
will sell to-morrow morning, and not 
something that will be true to-morrow, 
and for a year of to-morrows. The large 
majority of Americans do not know good 
English from bad — though they have a 
keen appreciation of smart writing — hence 
a trained and clever craftsman with the pen 
is of no more value than the average re- 
porter, and would probably cost more. 

The fact that domestic politics is man- 
aged and directed, not by the people, but 
by professional politicians, makes it un- 
necessary — futile when they do — for the 
mass of the people to learn even about their 
own political questions from their news- 
papers. So far as foreign politics are con- 
cerned, the mass Q,i Americans take little 
interest in them, and give little heed to 
278 



American Newspapers 



what is written on such subjects. Hence 
the newspapers are not looked to for teach- 
ing of a direct and valuable kind, as they 
are in other countries. 

<'What is going on," is a familiar head- 
ing in many newspapers, and to tell this 
luridly or decently, and no matter how in- 
accurately, is the sole aim of many of them. 
In an empire or a monarchy it is not, per- 
haps, necessary that the people should be 
students, but in a republic it is the prime 
necessity. To study and to learn requires 
training, and you cannot train on absinthe 
or cocktails. 

The lower-class newspapers accustom the 
people to such highly seasoned fare that the 
plain diet of honest thought becomes dis- Dangerous 
tasteful to them. These newspapers, there- 
fore, are themselves not only not teaching 
anything good, but they are making it more 
and more difficult for anyone else to do any 
teaching that shall be of practical value. 
The repeated failure to make a weekly 
paper, say like the London Spectator, a 
success here, and the difficulty of making 
even a sound daily newspaper a paying 
279 



diet. 



America and the Americans 

venture, bear witness to the debauchery of 
the reading pubhc by the sensational press. 

On the other hand, the Americans have 
an illustrated weekly paper, called, I be- 
lieve. Harper's Weekly, which is far supe- 
rior to anything of the kind in Europe, and 
their beautifully illustrated monthly mag- 
Firstrate aziucs have no rivals even, anywhere in 
journa ism. ^^ ^yorld. Thcse, howcvcr, do not depend 
for their popularity upon any one city, or 
upon any one section of the country, but 
are subscribed for, and read, by the better 
classes all over the country. In this con- 
nection it is fair to say, too, that my own 
favorable conclusions in regard to such 
newspapers as the Sun, the Post, and the 
Tribune, in New York, and others else- 
where, are but echoes of the respectable 
opinion there. 

I plume myself, not upon having made 
any journalistic discoveries, but upon hav- 
ing used a European measure upon Amer- 
ican newspapers, only to find that its 
records tally with what Americans, who 
are best able to judge, say themselves 

Nothing is more difficult for a traveller 

280 



American Newspapers 



of it. 



than to say what is good, and what is evil, 
in a stranger nation. But, the world over, 
it is believed, to put the matter broadly, 
that courage is virtue, and cowardice is 
vice. Trace back the pedigree of any 
virtue, and its first ancestor was courage. 
Trace back the pedigree of any vice, and The ethics 
its first ancestor was cowardice. Then we 
must all admit — Frenchmen, Americans, 
Englishmen, and Italians, alike — that stab- 
bing men and women in the back ; hurl- 
ing anonymous insults at them — one West- 
ern newspaper calls the President of the 
United States a wife-beater — publishing 
persistently misleading news ; prying into 
the private affairs of private families ; pub- 
lishing stolen photographs of women and 
children ; listening to, and circulating, 
character-destroying stories without troub- 
ling to investigate or to hear the other 
side; devoting a responsible position to 
the exploitation of crime, scandal, and un- 
verified rumors is cowardly, and, therefore, 
unworthy of a gentleman. 

If American newspapers are in the habit 
of doing any or all of these things, we can 
281 



America and the Americans 

all agree that they are bad, without going 
into ethical details, that lend themselves to 
discussion and argument. That some of 
these newspapers, and their proprietors and 
editors, do devote themselves to the print- 
ing of such matter, no one here denies. 

The strange code of morals of these peo- 
ple is thus brought more than ever into 
prominence. You may sit at dinner near 
a man who, a few hours before, saw the 
proof of an article reciting the nasty de- 
tails of a social scandal, and who ordered 
it printed ; while if this same man told the 
same story at his club, steps would be taken 
to bring about his resignation. The far- 
ther you travel into the interior, the more 
the people look upon their newspapers as 
privileged social and moral Juggernaut 
cars, to which there is nothing to do but to 
kneel for crushing. 

They are an ingenious people, these 
Americans. It will not be long before 
A sugges- there is an American Association for Pro- 
tection against the Newspapers. Members 
of the association will pay so much each year, 
and the association will undertake in return, 
282 



Hon. 



American Newspapers 



with eminent lawyers for counsel and large 
wealth behind it, to protect its members 
from anonymous attack of a malicious or 
meddlesome kind. Then will cease that 
most incomprehensible and vulgar feature 
of American life, to the stranger, namely, 
the daily publication of private and per- 
sonal details of home and social Hfe. 

No doubt many Americans love to see 
their names in print, but they are usually 
those who deserve no such attention, and 
as for those who do not, Hfe is sometimes 
made intolerable for them. 

Even from the low commercial stand- a comjner- 
point, it is estimated that many millions of "'*^'^'''^- 
the much-striven-for dollars are now ex- 
pended in Europe by Americans, who 
frankly tell you that they have been 
hounded out of the country by the news- 
papers. They have committed no graver 
fault than to be the possessors of large 
wealth, but the newspapers made privacy 
impossible to them, their children, or even 
their servants, and what money could not 
buy here, they have gone to Europe to buy 
in peace there. 

283 



America and the Americans 

Surely the wide-awake Yankee shop- 
keeper will begin to see, ere long, that this 
class of newspaper proprietor is making 
more money for himself than he is making 
for them. Driving away the rich in order 
to feed the poor on sensations is, to be sure, 
a form of philanthropy, but in a commer- 
cial country it is a form of charity that not 
only begins, but stays, at home, in a few 
newspaper offices. 

This freedom of the press has its advan- 
tages, perhaps, in one particular respect, and 
that is, the general confidence on the part 
of the public that their newspapers are 
The buying not, as a rule, bribed for financial or mer- 
papel^s". can tile purposes ; though no doubt the 

weaker provincial newspapers are regular- 
ly subsidized by one side or the other in 
every great political campaign. Some- 
times, when great questions of financial or 
economic policy are at stake, enormous 
sums are spent in this way, the party which 
does the subsidizing, of course, holding that 
such expenditure is a legitimate education 
of the people. 

In conclusion, one may say that at least 

284 



American New^^apers 



the American newspaper ries hard to be 
entertaining and interesting^, and often suc- 
ceeds. So far as many of their editors and 
contributors are concerned, I ought to be, 
and certainly shall be, always hereafter the 
first to maintain that they are not only in- 
teresting and entertaining, but delightfully 
hospitable, as well. Be it said that this is 
true of many other departments of Ameri- 
can life. The men are better than their TAe vien 

themselves. 

work. Travellers who meet and know 
Americans, are, as a rule, confident of the 
final outcome of American institutions. 
Those who judge of America by American 
work alone, or by American diplomacy, or 
by Americans idling in Europe, are more 
prone to pessimism. 



285 




XXI 

Conclusion 

[T is no easy matter to sum up 
one's impressions of a nation 
of seventy millions of people 
scattered over a country ex- 
tending from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
Finally, Oceau, and from Canada to the Gulf of 

brethren ! t. , . ,^, , . „ 

Mexico. There are so many different na- 
tionalities, so many different climates, S9 
many different interests, that one finds state- 
ments of facts for one section, and one 
class, and one climate, are no longer fair 
statements if applied to another section, 
another climate, another class. While there 
is social snobbery in New York, and intel- 
lectual snobbery in Boston, and painful 
superficiality in Chicago, there is nothing 
of the kind in Bloody Gulch, or Daven- 
port, or New Orleans, or Galveston. 

This very diversity makes the country in- 
teresting to the traveller who goes from 

286 



Conclusion 



place to place merely to see or to hear 
some new thing, but, contrariwise, makes 
each particular locality seem monotonous 
and provincial to the European accustomed 
to have all climates, all classes, all interests 
centred in some one capital. 

Paris, Berlin, London, Rome, Buda- 
Pesth, offer a far greater variety, both in- 
tellectual and material, than any one city 
in America ; and yet, if one travels about 
in America, one finds a little of London, 
Paris, Berlin, Rome, and even Buda-Pesth 
tucked away in one corner or another of 
this huge country. 

Everything that one says may be true, 
and still everything may be contradicted 
by the righteous wrath of some community 
where such and such a state of things does 
not exist. If a certain condition of social ivhatis 

,.- . . . -KT -.r ■, 11 11 American f 

affairs exists m New York, and the traveller 
deems that American, the citizen of Daven- 
port bears witness that it does not exist 
there, and therefore accuses the traveller of 
knowing nothing of America. 

Lynching is American in South Carolina, 
but it is not American in Boston — at least 
287 



America and the Americans 

not since t86o or thereabouts; to go to 
dinner, or to the theatre, with one's back 
and bosom bare, is American in New York, 
Different but such a display in Davenport would 
render the offender liable to arrest, or, at 
any rate, certain of social condemnation ; 
to babble of Stendhal, and Rossetti, and 
Browning is American in Chicago, while it 
would be simple lunacy in Bloody Gulch ; 
to have a tub and a clean shirt and collar, 
to shave, and to dress for dinner every day, 
is American in Washington, and excites no 
remark, but to do those same things in 
Valentine, Nebraska, would not only excite 
remark, but probably social persecution ; to 
have a valet, and to wear polished shoes, 
and to brush one's hair till it glistens, and 
to drive a tandem, is not only American, 
but commonplace enough in New York, 
while in Sioux City such behavior v/ould 
be considered not only un-American, but 
anti -American ; to wear knickerbockers, 
parti -colored stockings, and a plaid waist- 
coat excites no comment in the country 
about New York, but in Topeka an appari- 
tion of that kind would assemble a crowd, 

288 



Conclusion 



and perhaps necessitate calling in the po- 
lice. 

No wonder, then, that the Due de Lian- 
court, and De Tocqueville, and Savarin, 
among my own countrymen, and Mrs. Foreign 
Trollope, and Dickens, Lady Stuart Wort- 
ley, Richard Cobden, Frederika Bremer, 
Arnold, W. H. Russell, and other visitors 
from "abroad" to America, have called 
down upon their heads sneers, denuncia- 
tion, and abuse. No doubt they all told 
the truth about what they saw, and told it 
amiably, and with the best intent in the 
world ; but this is the land of contradic- 
tions, and it is an easy task for the native 
critic to pander to his sensitive fellow- 
citizens by showing only one side or the 
other of the picture as his case for the de- 
fendant requires. 

It is evident then that I cannot, in good 
faith, offer apologies for mistakes to Mr. Difficult to 

r>i • 1 • T-N 1 TV /r T • apologize. 

Smith, in Davenport, and to Mr. Jones, m 
Bloody Gulch, \vhen to Mr. Knicker- 
bocker, in New York, and to Mr, May- 
flower, in Boston, they are not mistakes at 
all ; or to Mr. Knickerbocker and to Mr. 
289 



America and the Americans 

Mayflower for mistakes which to Mr. 
Smith and to Mr. Jones are not mistakes. 
I must take my chance with other visitors 
to America, should American critics deem 
my friendly and fraternal chronicle worthy 
of their notice at all. 

If I were asked to outline in a few para- 
A sum- graphs the fundamental differences between 
mary. ^^^ ^^^^ clvilization and the older civili- 

zations of Europe, I should phrase the mat- 
ter as follows : First, there is a strange 
exclusion of the more cultivated classes 
from even a proportionate share of author- 
ity and responsibility in the governing 
machinery. The best men do not rule in 
domestic, nor guide in foreign, politics. 
They may do so indirectly, but they do 
not appear directly. This condition of 
affairs explains the rather happy-go-lucky 
political methods in vogue, and at the same 
time explains the fact that social life, — the 
polite world, — strikes the foreigner as be- 
ing so unreal, so ineffective, so monotonous, 
so detached from great issues. 

In the old Greek world a man was only 
a citizen when he was a politician ; to the 
290 



Conclusion 



foreigner this democracy seems to require 
for stability, that every gentleman should 
be a politician, and every poHtician a gen- 
tleman, but no honest traveller can say that 
such is the actual situation. 

Second, there is undoubtedly social dis- 
content in this new country, as there is in Discontent 
Europe. In Europe, however, this discon- '}>ktioso/>hy. 
tent poses at least as a philosophy, in some 
places even as a religion, and dignifies its 
vagaries under the various sub-titles of social- 
ism. Here the social discontent is, mainly, 
outspoken and vulgar jealousy. The result 
is what I have noted elsewhere, the fact 
that classes are farther apart, less in touch 
with one another here, than in Europe. 
This seems at first sight improbable, till one 
remembers that good-fellowship and even 
friendship may exist in spite of conflicting 
opinions, but never in spite of distrust and 
jealousy, particularly jealousy of this sordid 
kind. 

This aloofness on the part of the polite 

and the cultured, and this undisguised and 

untempered jealousy on the part of the less 

fortunate classes, are salient characteristics 

291 



America atid the Americans 

of the life here, life, that is, as it would be 
looked at from the point of view of the 
foreign student. All the details, anec- 
dotes, illustrations, and comments in the 
foregomg pages may be traced more or less 
directly to these larger considerations jiBt 
v^ named. 

I like America and the Americans so 
much ; they have been so hospitable, so 
generous, and so friendly to me : their 
country is so e\-idently prosperous, 1 can- 
not fancy that in these journal pages I 
An apology have passed criticisms unworthy of them 
inaa^an^c. ^^ of me. If I have done that, then I beg 
here and now to apologize : certainly that is 
a mistake, not only as against New York 
but as against Bloody Gulch, not only as 
against New Orleans but as against the 
most northern community in Oregon. 

Of the one triumph most desired, I can- 
not, in any event, whether critics be kind 
or harsh, be deprived. The lady for 
whom the journal was first undertaken en- 
joyed reading the manuscript, and thought 
the Americans must be a ' ' curious and 
interesting people : " — she may, alas, have 
292 



Coficlusion 



read it hastily — none the less my task and 
the impression that I wished on the whole 
to produce were both accepted as they 
were meant. Hence : 

" All is well ended, if this suit be won, 
That you express content." 



'91 



THE IVORY SERIES 

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AMERICA AND 



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